Forecasting the Annual Incidence of TB in Namibia Using the Multilayer Perceptron

Namibia is a high TB burden and high TB incidence country in the SADC region. The government is working very hard in the prevention and control of TB because it has experienced a downward trend in the incidence of TB between 2000-2018 through implementation of effective preventive and control measures. In this research article, the ANN approach was applied to analyze TB incidence in Namibia. The employed data covers the period 2000-2018 and the out-of-sample period ranges over the period 2019-2023. The residuals and forecast evaluation criteria (Error, MSE and MAE) of the applied model indicate that the model is stable in forecasting TB incidence Namibia. The results of the study indicate that the country will continue to experience a downward trajectory in the incidence of TB over the period 2019-2023. Amongst other strategies the government of Namibia should intensify TB surveillance and control strategies to significantly reduce TB incidence to below 30 new cases per 100 000 population/year.