IGIENEDION JEREMIAH OSASENAGA

Malaria remains a global health crisis, particularly in low-resource regions, where traditional diagnostic methods face challenges such as human error, resource constraints, and delayed detection. This project addresses these limitations by leveraging supervised machine learning (ML) to enhance malaria diagnosis and outbreak prediction. The motivation stems from the urgent need for scalable, accurate, and cost-effective solutions to reduce the disease’s burden, which claims over 600,000 lives annually. The objective is to develop robust ML models capable of automating malaria diagnosis using blood smear images and patient metadata while improving outbreak forecasting through environmental and epidemiological data analysis. Methodologically, the study employs supervised learning algorithms, including convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for imagebased detection and random forests for tabular data. Datasets were preprocessed to handle class imbalance and missing values, followed by hyperparameter tuning and cross-validation to optimize performance. Results demonstrated that CNNs achieved 96% accuracy in classifying infected blood cells, outperforming traditional methods like microscopy. Random Forest models yielded 92% recall and 89% precision in predicting malaria risk from clinical data, highlighting their utility in early diagnosis. Additionally, stratified k-fold cross-validation ensured model generalizability across diverse datasets. This work underscores the transformative potential of supervised ML in malaria control, offering tools that enhance diagnostic speed, accuracy, and accessibility. By bridging technological innovation with public health needs, the project contributes to global efforts toward malaria eradication, particularly in endemic regions