Assessing the risk of dengue fever based on the environmental attribute in Baling, Kedah

Dengue Fever is an endemic disease that occurs throughout the year. The transmissions of Dengue disease is through the bite of an infected female aedes mosquitoes. There are two species aedes mosquitoes that transmits the disease are Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus. Weather factors such as temperature, rainfall, and humidity are the optimal conditions for mosquitoes to breed. The study of relationship between dengue fever with weather factors (temperature, rainfall, and humidity) in Baling District in Kedah from the year 2015 – 2019 is the main purpose of this research. This research is descriptive with ecological study design. The data source is secondary data from District Health Office of Baling for Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever case and Malaysia Meteorological Department for climate data. Correlation test is used to know the strength and direction of the relationship between independent variable and dependent variable. The results shows there is significant relationship between dengue cases and temperature at level of significant 0.05, where the R2 value indicate low positive correlation between this (p = 0.026; R2 = 0.287). Otherwise, there is no significant relationship between dengue cases with rainfall distribution and temperature because dengue disease is a multifactorial disease. There are many factors affected the incidents of dengue case which is environmental factors, human factors, and virus factors. Besides that, due to the small number of size sample (dengue cases) reported affected the accuracy of interpretation of the data. The possibility this situation happen because of asymptomatic infection cases and did not go to hospital for the treatment. So, the actual dengue incidence in Baling area unknown.