A Dynamic Analysis of Tuberculosis Dissemination to Improve Control and Surveillance

ZORZENON DOS SANTOS, RITA M; AMADOR, ANA; DE SOUZA, WAYNER V; DE ALBUQUERQUE, MARIA FATIMA. P. M.; PONCE DAWSON, SILVINA; RUFFINO-NETTO, ANTONIO; ZÁRATE-BLADÉS, CARLOS; SILVA, CELIO L.

PLOS ONE

PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE

Año: 2010

1932-6203

Detailed analysis of the dynamic interactions among biological, environmental, social, and economic factors that favour the spread of certain diseases is extremely useful for designing effective control strategies. Diseases like tuberculosis that kills somebody every 15 seconds in the world, require methods that take into account the disease dynamics to design truly efficient control and surveillance strategies. The usual and well established statistical approaches provide insights into the cause-effect relationships that favour disease transmission <!-- @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } -but they only estimate risk areas, spatial or temporal trends. Here we introduce a novel approach that allows figuring out the dynamical behaviour of the disease spreading. This information can subsequently be contrasted with modelling results from which the mechanisms that underlie the processes can be deciphered.