IntroEpi

INTRODUCTION

Fight against malaria requires the coordinated action of agents with different backgrounds and experience.  Models are communication tools that provide a common language and scaffold to design and trial strategies.  Here we show how Agent-based -or Individual-based  Models (IbMs)- can contribute to this end by studying the structure and outcome of three deliberately simple epidemiological models.

The presented models are sample approximations designed to perform ilustrative simulations to compare different approaches and to serve as scaffold  for building further more ellaborate IbMs. They are briefly described below.

Three models 

•  Model A) SI1RI2 - PbM with constant human population divided into four segments: susceptible to infection (S), infected showing clinical symptoms (I1), infected  asymptomatic (I2), and recovered non-susceptible (R). Transition from segment to segment controlled by ordinary differential equations.
•  Model B) H(SI1RI2) - M(SI)  PbM with constant host and vector populations, consisting of model A combined with a mosquito population separated into susceptible vectors (S) and infectious segments (I).
•  Model C)  IbM with constant host and vector populations, whose individual states correspond to the segments in model B. Each person can be either in a healthy state (S), infected with clynical symptoms (I1) or without showing them (I1), or in a   recovered non-susceptible state which can't be infected, nor carries the disease.