ANALYZING THE INCIDENCE OF REPORTED CASES OF MALARIA IN SOUTH-EAST OF NIGERIA VIA FACTORIAL DESIGN

Abstract

The study examined the incidence of reported cases of malaria in South East geopolitical zone of Nigeria using factorial design. A 3² factorial design with mixed factors was employed for the data on the number of various malaria reported cases. The two factors involved served as the exponent, whereas the three levels of each factor served as the base 3; hence the 3² factorial design. The data for the study were collected from the three randomly selected states in the South East geopolitical zone of Nigeria based on the yearly reported cases of malaria from 2014 to 2021 in four purposively private owned hospitals in each of the state. In addition, the levels of factor R (state) were randomly chosen while those of factor C (status of malaria patient) were fixed, hence the mixed effect aspect of the design. The error term of the model was subjected to normality test via the Kolmogorov smirnov, and it was concluded that the normality assumption was fulfilled. The findings of the study showed that the average yearly malaria treated, death and active cases per state in South-East of Nigeria were about 162, 24 and 167 respectively for the period between the year 2014 and 2021. Furthermore, the average yearly number of confirmed malaria cases was 117 per state in South-East for the year under study. The study concluded that the mixed effect model is not appropriate for the prediction of the various reported cases of malaria since the error term is not normally distributed.