ABSTRACT
This paper aims to find out the impacts of meteorological factors on malaria transmission by exploring the relationship between monthly local malaria cases and meteorological factors in Tengchong county,so as to develop malaria control strategy.Plasmodium vivax malaria incidence data and meteorological data including monthly mean temperature,maximum temperature,minimum temperature,rainfall,relative humidity,and minimum humidity in Tengchong County,Yunnan from 2005 to 2010 were provided by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and China Meteorological Administration.The correlation between malaria incidence and meteorological factors was analyzed using Pearson correlation analysis.The generalized additive model (GAM) was applied to investigate the relationship between monthly local malaria cases and meteorological factors.Results showed that there was a weak positive correlation between minimum temperature,mean relative humidity as well as minimum relative humidity and local malaria incidences.While a complex nonlinear relationship between the vectorial capacity,relative humidity and the incidence of malaria was detected.Malaria transmission increases when the vectorial capacity was greater than 10 (VCAP＞10) or the average relative humidity was between 55％ and 70％.The malaria transmission declines when relative humidity above 70％.The relationship between meteorological factors and the incidence of local malaria is well explained by GAM,and there is a complex nonlinear relationship between vectorial capacity,relative humidity and malaria incidence.