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Malaria is a major public health problem in Malawi, however, quantifying its burden in a population is a challenge. Routine hospital data provide a proxy for measuring the incidence of severe malaria and for crudely estimating morbidity rates. Using such data, this paper proposes a method to describe trends, patterns and factors associated with in-hospital mortality attributed to the disease.

We develop semiparametric regression models which allow joint analysis of nonlinear effects of calendar time and continuous covariates, spatially structured variation, unstructured heterogeneity, and other fixed covariates. Modelling and inference use the fully Bayesian approach via Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation techniques. The methodology is applied to analyse data arising from paediatric wards in Zomba district, Malawi …