The relationship between climate change and malaria in South-East Asia: A systematic review of the evidence

Background: Climatic change is an inescapable fact that implies alterations in seasons where weather occurrences have their schedules shift from the regular and magnitudes intensify to more extreme variations over a multi-year period. Southeast Asia is one of the many regions experiencing changes in climate and concurrently still has endemicities of malaria. Given that previous studies have suggested the influence of climate on malaria’s vector the Anopheles mosquitoes and parasite the Plasmodium group, this study was conducted to review the evidence of associations made between malaria cases and climatic variables in Southeast Asia throughout a multi-year period. Methods: Our systematic literature review was informed by the PRISMA guidelines and registered in PROSPERO: CRD42022301826 on 5th February 2022. We searched for original articles in English and Indonesian that focused on the associations between climatic variables and malaria cases. Results: The initial identification stage resulted in 535 records of possible relevance and after abstract screening and eligibility assessment we included 19 research articles for the systematic review. Based on the reviewed articles, changing temperatures, precipitation, humidity and windspeed were considered for statistical association across a multi-year period and are correlated with malaria cases in various regions throughout Southeast Asia. Conclusions: According to the review of evidence, climatic variables that exhibited a statistically significant correlation with malaria cases include temperatures, precipitation, and humidity. The strength of each climatic variable varies across studies. Our systematic review of the limited evidence indicates that further research for the Southeast Asia region remains to be explored.