Impact of Meteorological Parameters on Distribution of Pulmonary Tuberculosis in the City of Yaoundé, Centre Region of Cameroon

Tuberculosis remains a major health problem and particularly in the Centre Region of Cameroon where prevalence is still high in the city of Yaounde. Climate has been proved to have impact on tuberculosis distribution. This study aimed at assessing possible association of TB notifications with some meteorological parameters. Daily, weekly, monthly and quaterly aggregates of tuberculosis diagnosis results for consecutive tuberculosis patients tested over one year (April 2010 until March 2011) at Jamot Hospital of Yaounde were analysed (Microsoft excel and SPSS). A total of 665 tuberculosis patients were enrolled at the Jamot Hospital of Yaounde during the study period. Weekly mean humidity and temperature were related to tuberculosis cases with respectively Pearson correlation coefficients of 0.291 and -0.342 even though the relation was weak. For the relationship magnitude 8.5% and 11.7% of the variance in tuberculosis cases were explained by weekly mean humidity and temperature respectively. A Poisson regression predicted more tuberculosis cases following weekly increase of humidity, a statistically significant result with p ˂ 0.001. There was 12.1% decrease in the number of tuberculosis cases for each decrease of temperature per week. However, rainfall had no impact on tuberculosis notifications even though most cases were recorded in rainy season while seasonal index changed over time. In short, tuberculosis notifications showed to be associated to two meteorological parameters: mean ambient temperature and relative mean humidity. The highest peak was in the month of June during the rainy season. Data from this work may contribute to the National Tuberculosis Control Program to model tuberculosis variation from recorded tuberculosis notifications since years in order to find an indicator for better intervention strategies for disease control.