Chalmers Conferences, 9th European Conference on Mathematical and Theoretical Biology

Influence of Climate Variables on Scorpion Envenomation
Schehrazad SELMANE

Last modified: 2014-03-31

Abstract


Scorpion stings represent a public health problem in many tropical and subtropical regions of the world due to suitable climate and environmental conditions for scorpions. Due to its geographical location, its climate and its socio-economic structure, scorpion envenomation represents a real public health problem in Algeria. The epidemiological situation of the scorpion envenomation revealed that 77% of provinces are affected by the scorpion envenomation accidents and hence 69% of the national population is at risk of scorpion stings. Fourteen provinces of Highlands and Sahara together account alone for almost 90% of patients stung and the entire deaths. A total of 911907 scorpion sting cases and 1977 deaths were recorded by health services between 1991 and 2012.

In the aim to help determine the appropriate number of antivenom vials necessary in health facilities in M’Sila province which is faced to scorpion envenomation; we undertook a research study on the significance of climatological variables to predict the incidence of scorpion stings in humans. From the data of the study for the period 2001-2012, it is concluded that the scorpion activity is an environmental climatology dependent phenomenon; the temperature and relative humidity are the essential factors; they were used to derive a predictive model of scorpion sting incidence.


Keywords


climate; count data; regression model; scorpion