Open AccessMODELLI SPAZIO-TEMPORALI DI DIFFUSIONE, PREVISIONE E CONTROLLO DELLE EPIDEMIE DI COLERA: DAL SUDAFRICA AD HAITI
Author(s) -
Marino Gatto,
Lorenzo Mari,
Andrea Rinaldo
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
rendiconti. classe di scienze matematiche e naturali
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2384-986X
pISSN - 1974-6989
DOI - 10.4081/scie.2011.79
Subject(s) - preparedness , outbreak , cholera , intervention (counseling) , geography , public health , waterborne diseases , emergency management , environmental planning , epidemiology , environmental health , computer science , political science , economic growth , medicine , virology , economics , nursing , psychiatry , law
Understanding, predicting and controlling the dynamics of cholera and other waterborne diseases are crucial goals of public health policies. Appropriate quantitative models to forecast epidemic development and to evaluate possible intervention scenarios would be specially needed during epidemic outbreaks, when preparedness and efficient allocation of resources are key to emergency management. Moreover, these tools ought to be spatially explicit, because waterborne disease epidemics usually display spatially inhomogeneous patterns. Here we describe spatially explicit epidemiological models and methods for real-time forecast of waterborne disease epidemics and design of intervention strategies for epidemic prevention and control. Applications to two cholera epidemics in South Africa and Haiti are briefly illustrated.