Seasonality and spatial heterogeneity of confirmed malaria in Senegal (2009-2025): consistency with VECTRI simulations driven by ten bias-adjusted CMIP6 models and projected changes

VECTRI simulations driven by ten bias-adjusted NEX-GDDP-CMIP6 models match Senegal’s malaria season timing and transmission gradient, but do not reproduce regional differences in timing.

• Why it matters: Routine monthly subnational surveillance has rarely been used to test whether dynamical malaria models capture observed seasonality and spatial heterogeneity in Senegal.
• What they did: Monthly confirmed cases (14 regions, 2009–2025; 79 health districts, 2016–2025) were compared with VECTRI outputs driven by MRI-ESM2-0 and evaluated against CHIRPS rainfall, using seasonal centre of gravity and Spearman correlation with TPR.
• The result: Observed cases lagged simulated EIR by 1.06 months (95% CI 0.88–1.23) in 13 of 14 regions, and EIR correlated with TPR across 45 departments (rho=0.67, 95% CI 0.47–0.79); under SSP5-8.5, simulated EIR fell 35% (p<0.001).

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.