APPLICATION OF AREA TO POINT KRIGING TO BURULI ULCER INCIDENCE IN ASHANTI AND BRONG AHAFO REGIONS OF GHANA

Abstract

Buruli ulcer (BU) is the third most common mycobacterium disease after tuberculosis and leprosy. The disease eats through the skin, muscle and bone, leaving victims with disfiguring and debilitating craters. Ghana is the second most endemic country globally, after Cote d’Ivoire with over 1,048 cases with the most endemic regions being the Ashanti, Greater Accra, Central and the Brong Ahafo. The goal of the paper is to use Area to Point Kriging (ATP) method to model the spatial distribution of Buruli ulcer incidence in the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo Regions of Ghana. The ATP method used consist of three steps; filtering of noise in the data based on Poisson kriging, the mapping of the corresponding risk at a fine scale and estimating geographical clustering of the disease at the administrative units. This paper focused on the spatial analysis of Buruli ulcer incidence in the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo region in terms of sex. The research revealed that there is a large range of spatial autocorrelation in males than in females in the various administrative units. The administrative units in Brong Ahafo close to Ashanti region have high BU incidence than the units far away from the Ashanti. The clustering analysis revealed that only Amansie West district is statistically significant for both sexes.