Table of Contents

1. Key Facts
2. Overview
3. Data Wrangling and Data Cleaning
4. Exploratory Data Analysis/Data Storytelling and Visualization
5. Conclusion
6. References

Key Facts

• Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by a Plasmodium parasite transmitted to people through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes. It is preventable and curable.
• In 2020, there were an estimated 241 million cases of malaria worldwide.
• The estimated number of malaria deaths stood at 627 000 in 2020.
• The WHO African Region carries a disproportionately high share of the global malaria burden. In 2020, the region was home to 95% of malaria cases and 96% of malaria deaths. Children under 5 accounted for about 80% of all malaria deaths in the Region.

Overview

Malaria is an acute febrile illness caused by Plasmodium parasites, which are spread to people through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes. There are 5 parasite species that cause malaria in humans, and 2 of these species – P. falciparum and P. vivax – pose the greatest threat. P. falciparum is the deadliest malaria parasite and the most prevalent on the African continent. P. vivax is the dominant malaria parasite in most countries outside of sub-Saharan Africa.

The first symptoms – fever, headache and chills – usually appear 10–15 days after the infective mosquito bite and may be mild and difficult to recognize as malaria. Left untreated, P. falciparum malaria can progress to severe illness and death within a period of 24 hours.

In 2020, nearly half of the world's population was at risk of malaria. Some population groups are at considerably higher risk of contracting malaria and developing severe disease: infants, children under 5 years of age, pregnant women, patients with HIV/AIDS, as well as people with low immunity moving to areas with intense malaria transmission such as migrant workers, mobile populations, and travellers.

This project on malaria covers five(5) countries in Africa, namely Nigeria, Congo, Uganda, Mozambique, and Niger, and it provides insight analysis on Infected Demographic by Sex, Infected Demographic by age range, Reported cases by date, Affected locations heatmap, Mortality by region, Mortality by age range, etc. The dataset was gotten and compiled from vizhub.healthdata.org.

Data Wrangling and Data Cleaning

The dataset was cleaned and transformed using the Power Query Editor in PowerBI. We appended queries, changed datatypes, removed and renamed some columns as well.

Relationships were created.

The dataset was organized into tables based on relationships using granularity.

Exploratory Data Analysis/Data Storytelling and Visualization

Infected Demographic

Analysis 1(Total Number of Cases by Age Range)

This analysis (which makes use of a clustered column chart) shows that age 1-4 years has the highest number of cases(1.26 billion) and age 50-54 has the lowest number of cases(0.01 billion)

Analysis 2(Total Number of Cases by Gender)

This analysis of infected demographic by sex(which makes use of a donut chart) shows that the female gender has a 50.15% total number of cases, while the male gender has a 49.85% total number of cases.

Analysis 3(Total Number of Cases by Date- Year 2009-2019)

This analysis shows the total number of cases between the year 2009-2019. It shows that the maximum number of cases occurred in the year 2010 with a total number of 113,628,501 cases and the minimum number of cases occurred in the year 2015 with a total number of 97,557,037 cases.

Analysis 4(Affected locations heatmap)

This shows the affected countries/locations with cases of malaria and Nigeria being the most affected with the highest number of malaria cases(1,494,121,593)

Mortality

Analysis 5(Total Number of Deaths by Location)

This analysis(which makes use of a stacked bar chart) shows that Nigeria has the highest total number of deaths(5.4 million), while Niger has the least total number of deaths(0.6 million)

Analysis 6(Total Number of Deaths by Age Range)

This analysis(which makes use of clustered column chart) shows that age 1-4 years has the highest total number of deaths(5.5 million).

Analysis 7(Mortality by Sex)

This shows Male sex having a mortality rate of 52.27% and Female sex having a mortality rate of 47.73%.

MALARIA INFECTION MONITORING DASHBOARD

Conclusion

With these processes, the use of exploratory analysis, visualization tools, and data storytelling to effectively communicate the insights discovered and enable the evaluation of the high-dimensional data was illustrated. This will help researchers and health professionals, especially those working on surveillance and inspection teams, to gain a better view and understanding of malaria, thereby drawing conclusions concerning this life-threatening disease. This will keep the integrated database up-to-date as well as the government, allowing for more realistic monitoring, leading to more accurate and favourable solutions and decision-making.

References

vizhub.healthdata.org who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malaria malariajournal.biomedcentral.com mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/malaria google.com

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