PCLM-D-22-00022

Effect of climate change on cerebrospinal meningitis morbidities and mortalities: a longitudinal and community-based study in Ghana

PLOS Climate

Dear Mr. Akanwake,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Climate. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Erin Coughlan de Perez, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

Journal Requirements:

1. Please amend your detailed Financial Disclosure statement. This is published with the article. It must therefore be completed in full sentences and contain the exact wording you wish to be published.

-  State the initials, alongside each funding source, of each author to receive each grant.

- State what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role in your study, please state: “The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”

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https://journals.plos.org/climate/s/figures 

https://journals.plos.org/climate/s/figures#loc-file-requirements 

3. Please amend your Data Availability Statement and indicate where the data may be found

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

This is a critically important topic, and it is great to see the multiple methods in your research. The reviewers have suggested minor revisions, with good suggestions on how to check the assumptions in your model (and present the uncertainties to the reader).

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Recommendation: minor revision required

Major comments :

The GLM model that you used is certainly adequate, however you have not checked the assumptions of the model. Assumptions such as overdispersion are not checked.Overdispersion is often the result of model mis-specification, such caused by inappropriate or missing independent variables , but data may also be naturally overdispersed. It is very important to check this assumption because certain climatic variables have been highlighted as predictors in other studies but are not mentioned in your model. These include the NW-SE wind speed by Nakazawa and Matsueda, 2016 indicating that the NW-SE wind speed is the best predictor in a study in Burkina Faso. The Independence of the observations of the dependent variable must be checked, also does the variable follow a Poisson distribution ?

Minor comments :

•« Neisseria meningitidis » instead of « Neisseria meningitides »

•Review the presentation of descriptives statistics results : Don’t present at the same time the values of dichotomic variables : for exemple you may present only the results of « Yes » whithout presenting « No », same « Male » and « Female ».

•For Table 1, Table 3 and Table 7, present results as # (%). Don’t dissociate percentage. Put percentage in parentheses beside frequency.

•You may add median in Table 4

•« Obs » columns in Table 4 must be put as last column or can be removed.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript is very relevant and well written. It has added knowledge to understanding the association between climate change and factors and cerebrospinal meningitis in low and middle-income countries (LMIC) like Ghana. However, the research methods need significant review to make the manuscript more impactful. The manuscript can benefit from line numbering to aid review.

Other comments as an attachment.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Souleymane Sakande

Reviewer #2: Yes: Umeh Gregory

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Reviewers Comments.docx

Effect of climate change on cerebrospinal meningitis morbidities and mortalities: a longitudinal and community-based study in Ghana

PCLM-D-22-00022R1

Dear Mr Akanwake,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Effect of climate change on cerebrospinal meningitis morbidities and mortalities: a longitudinal and community-based study in Ghana' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Climate.

Before your manuscript can be formally accepted you will need to complete some formatting changes, which you will receive in a follow-up email from a member of our team. 

Please note that your manuscript will not be scheduled for publication until you have made the required changes, so a swift response is appreciated.

IMPORTANT: The editorial review process is now complete. PLOS will only permit corrections to spelling, formatting or significant scientific errors from this point onwards. Requests for major changes, or any which affect the scientific understanding of your work, will cause delays to the publication date of your manuscript.

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Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Climate.

Best regards,

Erin Coughlan de Perez, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):