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Fig. 5 | Malaria Journal

Fig. 5

From: Seasonal variation of malaria cases in children aged less than 5 years old following weather change in Zomba district, Malawi

Fig. 5

a Time series plot between the years 2012–2016 of under-five malaria cases in the highlands and lakeshores and the total number in Zomba, b a magnified time plot of the under-five malaria cases in the highlands and lakeshore areas only, c under-five malaria cases data fitted with smoothing moving average and low pass FFT filter and d the same data fitted with exponential growth and exponential decay curves. Note that in both highlands and lakeshore, the number of malaria case rises during the wet seasons and decrease during the dry until in the year 2014 when this pattern becomes distorted. Also regardless of whether rainfall goes down to zero or not, the number of malaria cases in both lakeshores and highlands is non-zero. Also note that the lakeshore areas account for consistently more under-five malaria infections all the time than the highlands. The fitting of the moving average and FFT filter equations reveals a frequency in the data pattern of malaria cases rising or falling at a rate of 0.125 per month (or a periodicity of 8 days). The fitting of the exponential growth and decay also leads to response times as low as 4.5 months (about 135 days) per malaria season, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I and J as indicated in d

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