Advanced Spatial-Temporal Statistics and Applications for Disease Mapping, Spatial Dependence and Capacity Building in Biostatistics in Sub-Saharan Africa Countries

Dear Colleagues,

Sub-Saharan Africa faces a high disease burden in communicable diseases and an increasing burden in non-communicable diseases with a strong spatial and temporal structure. More recently, increased funding for research from donor initiatives has generated high-quality household data volumes, but there is a high demand for biostatisticians to analyse these data locally and quickly, resulting in a lack of capacity for advanced data analysis.

Globally, the fields of geographical epidemiology and public health surveillance have benefited from combined advances in hierarchical model building and geographical information systems. Exploring and characterising a variety of spatial patterns of diseases at the disaggregated fine geographical resolution has become possible.

Donor-funded initiatives exist to address the dearth in statistical capacity, but few initiatives have been led by African institutions. The Sub-Saharan African Consortium for Advanced Biostatistics (SSACAB) aims to improve biostatistical capacity in Africa according to the needs identified by African institutions, through collaborative masters and doctoral training in biostatistics.

In this issue, we present work resulting in our effort to build capacity in recent developments in spatial-temporal models that have been used to characterise the spatial and temporal patterns of communicable and non-communicable disease burden in SSA through SSACAB and beyond.

Prof. Samuel Manda
Prof. Dr. Ngianga-bakwin Kandala
Prof. Dr. Tobias Chirwa
Prof. Thomas N O Achia
Guest Editors

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