Presenter: Idil Osman – Planning, Public Policy and Management
Faculty Mentor(s): Melissa Graboyes
Session: (In-Person) Data Stories—Data and more Data
This project focuses on the underreporting of epidemic rebound and resurgent malaria in nine African countries— The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Zanzibar and Zimbabwe— over the span of a century. Currently, malaria resurgence and rebound, occurring when malaria returns to a region after having been successfully controlled, have a history of being under-counted and under-reported, especially in the African continent. My research attempts to fill in these gaps by providing an overview and analysis of malaria prevalence from 1920-2020, and documenting unreported cases of malaria resurgence. I collected, organized, and analyzed historical epidemiological data of malaria prevalence and control measures and compiled it into a longer frame– essentially creating an entirely new panel dataset– so I could see longer trends in time and identify instances of rebound. My primary results have shown there to be multiple unreported cases of malaria rebound in my researched countries. This finding not only fills a wide gap in the field of malaria research, but also implicates the nature of data collection methodology and presentation on a global scale. The results will provide a framework in determining cases of resurgent malaria and in shifting the way the WHO and other public health organizations present their epidemiological data.