Recent statistics of malaria shows that over 200 million cases and estimated deaths of nearly half a million occur globally. Africa alone accounts for almost 90% of the cases. Several studies have been conducted to understand the disease transmission dynamics. In particular, mathematical methods have been frequently used to model and understand the disease dynamics and outbreak patterns. Although, mathematical methods have provided good results for homogeneous populations, these methods impose significant limitations for studying malaria dynamics in heterogeneous populations, a result of various factors, e.g. spatial and temporal fluctuations, social networks, human movements pattern etc. This paper proposes an agent-based modelling approach that permits modelling and analysing malaria dynamics for heterogenous populations. Our approach is illustrated using the climate and demographic data for the Tripura, Limpopo and Benin cities. Our agent-based simulation has been validated against the reported cases of malaria collected in the cities mentioned. Furthermore, the efficiency of the proposed model has been compared with the mathematical model used as benchmark. A statistical test confirms the proposed model is robust and has potential for predicting the peak seasons of malaria. This potentially makes our methods a useful tool as an intervention mechanism, which will have impact on hospitals, healthcare providers, health organisations.
Mass campaigns with antimalarial drugs are potentially a powerful tool for local elimination of malaria, yet current diagnostic technologies are insufficiently sensitive to identify all individuals who harbor infections. At the same time, overtreatment of uninfected individuals increases the risk of accelerating emergence of drug resistance and losing community acceptance. Local heterogeneity in transmission intensity may allow campaign strategies that respond to index cases to successfully target subpatent infections while simultaneously limiting overtreatment. While selective targeting of ho…
Malaria remains endemic in tropical areas, especially in Africa. For the evaluation of new tools and to further ourunderstanding of host-parasite interactions, knowing the environmental risk of transmission-even at a very local scale-isessential. The aim of this study was to assess how malaria transmission is influenced and can be predicted by local climaticand environmental factors. As the entomological part of a cohort study of 650 newborn babies in nine villages in the ToriBossito district of Southern Benin between June 2007 and February 2010, human landing catches were performed to assesst…
In this paper, a co-infection of malaria and visceral helminthiasis with immune stimulation and impairment is studied. We have assumed that an individual gets malaria infection during invasion by helminths larvae. In absence of immune response, our results show that the antigens invade the blood system if the rate of red cell rupture per invading merozoite is greater than one. If fewer merozoites are released, the initial state is globally asymptotically stable. If more merozoites are released, there exists malaria-only endemic point. However, both antigens coexist if the mean infection burden…
Antimalarial drugs are a powerful tool for malaria control and elimination. Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) can reduce transmission when widely distributed in a campaign setting. Modelling mass antimalarial campaigns can elucidate how to most effectively deploy drug-based interventions and quantitatively compare the effects of cure, prophylaxis, and transmission-blocking in suppressing parasite prevalence. A previously established agent-based model that includes innate and adaptive immunity was used to simulate malaria infections and transmission. Pharmacokinetics of artemether,…
Background As more regions approach malaria elimination, understanding how different interventions interact to reduce transmission becomes critical. The Lake Kariba area of Southern Province, Zambia, is part of a multi-country elimination effort and presents a particular challenge as it is an interconnected region of variable transmission intensities. Methods In 2012-13, six rounds of mass-screen-and-treat drug campaigns were carried out in the Lake Kariba region. A spatial dynamical model of malaria transmission in the Lake Kariba area, with transmission and climate modeled at the village sca…
Background Elimination of malaria can only be achieved through removal of all vectors or complete depletion of the infectious reservoir in humans. Mechanistic models can be built to synthesize diverse observations from the field collected under a variety of conditions and subsequently used to query the infectious reservoir in great detail. Methods The EMOD model of malaria transmission was calibrated to prevalence, incidence, asexual parasite density, gametocyte density, infection duration, and infectiousness data from 9 study sites. The infectious reservoir was characterized by diagnostic det…
Wolbachia infection in Anopheles albimanus mosquitoes can render mosquitoes less capable of spreading malaria. We develop and analyze an ordinary differential equation model to evaluate the effectiveness of Wolbachia-based vector control strategies among wild Anopheles mosquitoes in Haiti. The model tracks the mosquito life stages, including egg, larva, and adult (male and female). It also accounts for critical biological effects, such as the maternal transmission of Wolbachia through infected females and cytoplasmic incompatibility, which effectively sterilizes uninfected females when they ma…
We introduce an agent-based model describing a susceptible-infectious-susceptible (SIS) system of humans and mosquitoes to predict malaria epidemiological scenarios in realistic biological conditions. Emphasis is given to the transition from endemic behavior to eradication of malaria transmission induced by combined drug therapies acting on both the gametocytemia reduction and on the selective mosquito mortality during parasite development in the mosquito. Our mathematical framework enables to uncover the critical values of the parameters characterizing the effect of each drug therapy. Moreove…
Plasmodium vivax populations are more resistant to malaria control strategies than Plasmodium falciparum, maintaining high genetic diversity and gene flow even at low transmission. To quantify the impact of declining transmission on P. vivax populations, we investigated population genetic structure over time during intensified control efforts and over a wide range of transmission intensities and spatial scales in the Southwest Pacific. Analysis of 887 P. vivax microsatellite haplotypes (Papua New Guinea, PNG = 443, Solomon Islands = 420, Vanuatu =24) revealed substantial population structure a…
We present a deterministic mathematical model for malaria transmission with waning immunity. The model consists of five non-linear system of differential equations. We used next generation matrix to derive the basic reproduction number $R_0$. The disease free equilibrium was computed and its local stability has been shown by the virtue of the Jacobean matrix. Moreover, using Lyapunov function theory and LaSalle Invariance Principle we have proved that the disease free equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable. Conditions for existence of endemic equilibrium point have been established. A q…
Determining the distribution of disease prevalence among heterogeneous populations at the national scale is fundamental for epidemiology and public health. Here, we use a combination of methods (spatial scan statistic, topological data analysis, epidemic profile) to study measurable differences in malaria intensity by regions and populations of Colombia. This study explores three main questions: What are the regions of Colombia where malaria is epidemic? What are the regions and populations in Colombia where malaria is endemic? What associations exist between epidemic outbreaks between regions…
In this work, two mathematical models for malaria under resistance are presented. More precisely, the first model shows the interaction between humans and mosquitoes inside a patch under infection of malaria when the human population is resistant to antimalarial drug and mosquitoes population is resistant to insecticides. For the second model, human-mosquitoes population movements in two patches is analyzed under the same malaria transmission dynamic established in one patch. For a single patch, existence and stability conditions for the equilibrium solutions in terms of the local basic reprod…
A comparative stochastic and deterministic study of a family of SEIRS epidemic dynamic models for malaria is presented. The family type is determined by the qualitative behavior of the nonlinear incidence rates of the disease. Furthermore, the malaria models exhibit three random delays:- two of the delays represent the incubation periods of the disease inside the vector and human hosts, whereas the third delay is the period of effective natural immunity against the disease. The stochastic malaria models are improved by including the random environmental fluctuations in the disease transmission…
Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease with a devastating global impact. Plasmodium vivax is a major cause of human malaria beyond sub-Saharan Africa. Relapsing infections, driven by a reservoir of liver-stage parasites known as hypnozoites, present unique challenges for the control of P. vivax malaria. Following indeterminate dormancy periods, hypnozoites may activate to trigger relapses. Clearance of the hypnozoite reservoir through drug treatment (radical cure) has been proposed as a potential tool for the elimination of P. vivax malaria. Here, we introduce a stochastic, within-host model to j…
Malaria is an infectious disease with an immense global health burden. Plasmodium vivax is the most geographically widespread species of malaria. Relapsing infections, caused by the activation of liver-stage parasites known as hypnozoites, are a critical feature of the epidemiology of Plasmodium vivax. Hypnozoites remain dormant in the liver for weeks or months after inoculation, but cause relapsing infections upon activation. Here, we introduce a dynamic probability model of the activation-clearance process governing both potential relapses and the size of the hypnozoite reservoir. We begin b…
We examine how spatial heterogeneity combines with mobility network structure to influence vector-borne disease dynamics. Specifically, we consider a Ross-Macdonald-type disease model on $n$ spatial locations that are coupled by host movement on a strongly connected, weighted, directed graph. We derive a closed form approximation to the domain reproduction number using a Laurent series expansion, and use this approximation to compute sensitivities of the basic reproduction number to model parameters. To illustrate how these results can be used to help inform mitigation strategies, as a case st…
In this work, a periodically-forced seasonal non-autonomous system of a non-linear ordinary differential equation is developed that captures the dynamics of Lassa fever transmission and seasonal variation in the birth of mastomys rodents where time was measured in days to capture seasonality. It was shown that the model is epidemiologically meaningful and mathematically well-posed by using the results from the qualitative properties of the solution of the model. It was established that in order to eliminate Lassa fever disease, treatments with Ribavirin must be provided early to reduce mortali…
Falciparum malaria is a major parasitic disease causing widespread morbidity and mortality globally. Artemisinin derivatives---the most effective and widely-used antimalarials that have helped reduce the burden of malaria by 60% in some areas over the past decade---have recently been found to induce growth retardation of blood-stage Plasmodium falciparum when applied at clinically relevant concentrations. To date, no model has been designed to quantify the growth retardation effect and to predict the influence of this property on in vivo parasite killing. Here we introduce a mechanistic model …
The global public health landscape is perpetually challenged by the looming threat of infectious diseases. Central to addressing this concern is the imperative to prevent and manage disease transmission during pandemics, particularly in unique settings. This study addresses the transmission dynamics of infectious diseases within conference venues, presenting a computational model designed to simulate transmission processes within a condensed timeframe (one day), beginning with sporadic cases. Our model intricately captures the activities of individual attendees within the conference venue, enc…
Transmission models for infectious diseases are typically formulated in terms of dynamics between individuals or groups with processes such as disease progression or recovery for each individual captured phenomenologically, without reference to underlying biological processes. Furthermore, the construction of these models is often monolithic: they don't allow one to readily modify the processes involved or include the new ones, or to combine models at different scales. We show how to construct a simple model of immune response to a respiratory virus and a model of transmission using an easily …
A deterministic mathematical model is formulated and analyzed to study the transmission dynamics of Nipah virus both qualitatively and numerically. Existence and stability of equilibria were investigated and the model was rigorously analyzed. We then incorporated time dependent controls on the model, using Pontryagin's Maximum Principle to derive necessary conditions for the optimal control of the disease. We examined various combination strategies so as to investigate the impact of the controls on the spread of the disease. Through the numerical results, we found out that the optimal control …
Clostridium difficile infections (CDIs) affect patients in hospitals and in the community, but the relative importance of transmission in each setting is unknown. We developed a mathematical model of C. difficile transmission in a hospital and surrounding community that included infants, adults, and transmission from animal reservoirs. We assessed the role of these transmission routes in maintaining disease and evaluated the recommended classification system for hospital and community-acquired CDIs. The reproduction number in the hospital was <1 (range: 0.16-0.46) for all scenarios. Outside th…
Repeat asymptomatic testing in order to identify and quarantine infectious individuals has become a widely-used intervention to control SARS-CoV-2 transmission. In some workplaces, and in particular health and social care settings with vulnerable patients, regular asymptomatic testing has been deployed to staff to reduce the likelihood of workplace outbreaks. We have developed a model based on data available in the literature to predict the potential impact of repeat asymptomatic testing on SARS-CoV-2 transmission. The results highlight features that are important to consider when modelling te…
In this paper we propose some mathematical models for the transmission of dengue using a system of reaction-diffusion equations. The mosquitoes are divided into infected, uninfected and aquatic subpopulations, while the humans, which are divided into susceptible, infected and recovered, are considered homogeneously distributed in space and with a constant total population. We find Lie point symmetries of the models and we study theirs temporal dynamics, which provides us the regions of stability and instability, depending on the values of the basic offspring and the basic reproduction numbers.…
The COVID-19 pandemic has placed unprecedented demands on local public health units in Ontario, Canada, one of which was the need for in-house epidemiological-modelling capabilities. To address this need, Ontario Tech University and the Durham Region Health Department developed a native Windows desktop app that performs epidemiological modelling of infectious diseases. The app is an implementation of a multi-stratified compartmental epidemiological model that can accommodate multiple virus variants and levels of vaccination, as well as public health measures such as physical distancing, contac…
Bovine tuberculosis, a disease that affects cattle and badgers in Ireland, was studied via stochastic epidemic modeling using incidence data from the Four Area Project (Griffin et al., 2005). The Four Area Project was a large scale field trial conducted in four diverse farming regions of Ireland over a five-year period (1997-2002) to evaluate the impact of badger culling on bovine tuberculosis incidence in cattle herds. Based on the comparison of several models, the model with no between-herd transmission and badger-to-herd transmission proportional to the total number of infected badgers cull…
We develop an agent-based model of disease transmission in remote communities in Western Australia. Despite extreme isolation, we show that the movement of people amongst a large number of small but isolated communities has the effect of causing transmission to spread quickly. Significant movement between remote communities, and regional and urban centres allows for infection to quickly spread to and then among these remote communities. Our conclusions are based on two characteristic features of remote communities in Western Australia: (1) high mobility of people amongst these communities, and…
A fractional-order compartmental model was recently used to describe real data of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Portugal [Chaos Solitons Fractals 144 (2021), Art. 110652]. Here, we modify that model in order to correct time dimensions and use it to investigate the third wave of COVID-19 that occurred in Portugal from December 2020 to February 2021, and that has surpassed all previous waves, both in number and consequences. A new fractional optimal control problem is then formulated and solved, with vaccination and preventive measures as controls. A cost-effectiveness analysis is c…
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has changed our lives and still poses a challenge to science. Numerous studies have contributed to a better understanding of the pandemic. In particular, inhalation of aerosolised pathogens has been identified as essential for transmission. This information is crucial to slow the spread, but the individual likelihood of becoming infected in everyday situations remains uncertain. Mathematical models help estimate such risks. In this study, we propose how to model airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 at a local scale. In this regard, we combine microsco…
In late 2019, a novel coronavirus, the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak was identified in Wuhan, China and later spread to every corner of the globe. Whilst the number of infection-induced deaths in Ghana, West Africa are minimal when compared with the rest of the world, the impact on the local health service is still significant. Compartmental models are a useful framework for investigating transmission of diseases in societies. To understand how the infection will spread and how to limit the outbreak. We have developed a modified SEIR compartmental model with nine compartments (CoVCom9) to describe the d…
The introduction of Wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes into the population has recently been proposed as an alternative strategy against dengue. Although laboratory experiments have shown that the Wolbachia bacterium can reduce the levels of dengue virus in mosquitoes, it is also important to assess the performance of Wolbachia in reducing the incidence of dengue in human populations.In this thesis, deterministic mathematical models of human and mosquito populations in which either one or two dengue serotypes circulate are developed. We adapt these models to enable the investigation of dengue disea…
Modelling the interaction between ethnicity and infectious disease transmission dynamics in Aotearoa New Zealand during the first Omicron wave of the COVID-19 pandemic
There is a continuing debate on relative benefits of various mitigation and suppression strategies aimed to control the spread of COVID-19. Here we report the results of agent-based modelling using a fine-grained computational simulation of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in Australia. This model is calibrated to match key characteristics of COVID-19 transmission. An important calibration outcome is the age-dependent fraction of symptomatic cases, with this fraction for children found to be one-fifth of such fraction for adults. We apply the model to compare several intervention strategies, incl…
African Swine Fever (ASF) represents the main threat to swine production, with heavy economic consequences for both farmers and the food industry. The spread of the virus that causes ASF through Europe raises the issues of identifying transmission routes and assessing their relative contributions in order to provide insights to stakeholders for adapted surveillance and control measures. A simulation model was developed to assess ASF spread over the commercial swine network in France. The model was designed from raw movement data and actual farm characteristics. A metapopulation approach was us…
A Caputo-type fractional-order mathematical model for "metapopulation cholera transmission" was recently proposed in [Chaos Solitons Fractals 117 (2018), 37--49]. A sensitivity analysis of that model is done here to show the accuracy relevance of parameter estimation. Then, a fractional optimal control (FOC) problem is formulated and numerically solved. A cost-effectiveness analysis is performed to assess the relevance of studied control measures. Moreover, such analysis allows us to assess the cost and effectiveness of the control measures during intervention. We conclude that the FOC system …
An agent-based modelling approach to investigate the impact of gender on tuberculosis transmission in Uganda
University of Bath（巴斯大学）；Alpha Biomedical Research and Innovation Network（阿尔法生物医学研究与创新网络）；Makerere University, College of Health Sciences（Makerere大学健康科学学院）；University of Oxford（牛津大学）
Several epidemiological models have been proposed to study the evolution of COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, we propose an extension of the SUIHTER model, first introduced in [Parolini et al, Proc R. Soc. A., 2021] to analyse the COVID-19 spreading in Italy, which accounts for the vaccination campaign and the presence of new variants when they become dominant. In particular, the specific features of the variants (e.g. their increased transmission rate) and vaccines (e.g. their efficacy to prevent transmission, hospitalization and death) are modeled, based on clinical evidence. The new model i…
In this work we present a general framework for the modeling of the transmission dynamics of macroparasites which do not reproduce within the host like Ascaris lumbricoides, Trichuris trichiura, Necator americanus y Ancylostoma duodenale. The basic models are derived from general probabilistic models for the parasite density-dependent mating probability. Here we considered the particular, and common case, of a negative binomial distribution for the number of parasites in hosts. We find the basic reproductive number and we show that the system exhibit a saddle-node bifurcation at some value of …
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a leading cause of acute lower respiratory tract infection worldwide, resulting in approximately sixty thousand annual hospitalizations of <5-year-olds in the United States alone and three million annual hospitalizations globally. The development of over 40 vaccines and immunoprophylactic interventions targeting RSV has the potential to significantly reduce the disease burden from RSV infection in the near future. In the context of RSV, a highly contagious pathogen, dynamic transmission models (DTMs) are valuable tools in the evaluation and comparison of th…
