9. Predictions of Disease Spikes Induced by Climate Variability: A Pilot Real Time Forecasting Model Project from Maharashtra, India

Climate change is manifest globally through extreme weather events, altered rainfall patterns and spread of viral diseases. The emergence and re-emergence of arthropod-borne viral diseases viz. dengue, chikungunya, West Nile, Japanese encephalitis and Zika are of global public health concern. Over the last decade India has faced a huge burden of Dengue and chikungunya with more than ten million individuals affected. This not only necessitates studies on the role of environmental effects on disease, but also requires policy-framing towards effective prevention or control of epidemics. In this chapter we are presenting the initiative taken by the Government of Maharashtra state, Republic of India to establish a pilot project to record and document disease outbreaks in the different districts of the state and to develop a predictive model that can analyse the effect of meteorological parameters on disease occurrences. A web portal has been developed for recording of data and online display and efforts are on to develop mathematical models for analyses and estimation disease occurrences. As a first, we have successfully developed a Poisson regression model to describe the effects of meteorological parameters on dengue occurrences in the Nagpur region of the Maharashtra state.