Effects of local climate variability on transmission dynamics of cholera in Matlab, Bangladesh

Cholera is considered as a model for climate-related infectious diseases. In Bangladesh, cholera epidemics occur during summer and winter seasons, but it is not known how climate variability influences the seasonality of cholera. Therefore, the variability pattern of cholera events was studied in relation to the variation in local climate variables in Matlab, Bangladesh. Classification and regression tree (CART) and principal component analysis (PCA) were used to study the dependency and variability pattern of monthly total cholera cases. An average temperature <23.25 degrees C corresponded to the lowest average cholera occurrence (23 cases/month). At a temperature of >or=23.25 degrees C and sunshine <4.13h/day, the cholera occurrence was 39 cases/month. With increased sunshine (>or=4.13h/day) and temperature (23.25-28.66 degrees C), the second…