An Assessment on the Hidden Ecological Factors of the Incidence of Malaria

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (CC BY 4.0).Confounding effects of climatic factors temporally contribute to the prevalence of malaria. In this study, we explore a new framework for assessment and identification of hidden ecological factors to the incidence of malaria. A statistical technique, partial least squares path modeling and exploratory factor analysis, is employed to identify hidden ecological factors. Three hidden factors are identified: Factor I is related to minimum temperature and relative humidity, Factor II is related to maximum temperature and solar radiation and Factor III is related to precipitation and wind speed, respectively. Factor I is identified as the most influential hidden ecological factor of malaria incidence in the study area, as evaluated by communality and Dillon-Goldstein’s indices