abstract: In this dissertation the potential impact of some social, cultural and economic factors on
Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) dynamics and control are studied. In Chapter two, the inability
to detect and isolate a large fraction of EVD-infected individuals before symptoms onset is
addressed. A mathematical model, calibrated with data from the 2014 West African outbreak,
is used to show the dynamics of EVD control under various quarantine and isolation
effectiveness regimes. It is shown that in order to make a difference it must reach a high
proportion of the infected population. The effect of EVD-dead bodies has been incorporated
in the quarantine effectiveness. In Chapter four, the potential impact of differential
risk is assessed. A two-patch model without explicitly incorporate quarantine is used to
assess the impact of mobility on communities at risk of EVD. It is shown that the
overall EVD burden may lessen when mobility in this artificial high-low risk society is allowed.
The cost that individuals in the low-risk patch must pay, as measured by secondary
cases is highlighted. In Chapter five a model explicitly incorporating patch-specific quarantine
levels is used to show that quarantine a large enough proportion of the population
under effective isolation leads to a measurable reduction of secondary cases in the presence
of mobility. It is shown that sharing limited resources can improve the effectiveness of
EVD effective control in the two-patch high-low risk system. Identifying the conditions
under which the low-risk community would be willing to accept the increases in EVD risk,
needed to reduce the total number of secondary cases in a community composed of two
patches with highly differentiated risks has not been addressed. In summary, this dissertation
looks at EVD dynamics within an idealized highly polarized world where resources
are primarily in the hands of a low-risk community – a community of lower density, higher
levels of education and reasonable health services – that shares a “border” with a high-risk
community that lacks minimal resources to survive an EVD outbreak. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Applied Mathematics 2018
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:asu.edu/item:49363 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Contributors | Espinoza, Baltazar (Author), Castillo-Chávez, Carlos (Advisor), Kang, Yun (Committee member), Safan, Muntaser (Committee member), Arizona State University (Publisher) |
| Source Sets | Arizona State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Doctoral Dissertation |
| Format | 100 pages |
| Rights | http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/, All Rights Reserved |
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