Retrospective study of the prevalence of five selected infectious diseases in Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria: using Markovian approach

Major health indicators and causes of infectious diseases lie outside from direct influence of the health sector. Most significant contributor to human morbidity and mortality remains infectious diseases. This study accessed the dependency of conditional probabilities of future state for five selected infectious diseases (chickenpox, tuberculosis, diarrhoea, hepatitis, and meningitis) based on the present state of diseases. The sourced datasets contained information on human population, exposed population, and reported cases of the infectious diseases within the study area between 2008 and 2019. The sample size consisted of 275 children and 167 adults and Markov chain approach was used to predict the population under risk of infectious diseases. Findings showed that future states of the diseases were solely dependent on both initial and present states and that infected population had high probability of recovery at 5% level of significance. Also, different categories of patients’ transit from one state of the diseases to another. A projection of likelihood of infection with respect to diseases in future was also captured.