Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Participants
- Non-Participant Contributors
- Part 1 Transmissible diseases with long development times and vaccination strategies
- Part 2 Dynamics of immunity (development of disease within individuals)
- Part 3 Population heterogeneity (mixing)
- Part 4 Consequences of treatment interventions
- Conflicts between the individual and communities in treatment and control
- The design and analysis of HIV clinical trials
- A theory of population dynamics used for improving control of viral diseases: AZT chemotherapy and measles vaccination policy
- The ONCHOSIM model and it use in decision support for river blindness control
- Invited Discussion
- Invited Discussion
- Hydatid disease
- Vaccines and herd immunity: consequences for vaccine evaluation
- An epidemiological approach to the evaluation of disease control strategies for intestinal helminth infections: an age structured model
- The control of directly transmitted infections by pulse vaccination: concepts and preliminary studies
- Operational models for the prevention of blindness
- Part 5 Prediction
The ONCHOSIM model and it use in decision support for river blindness control
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Participants
- Non-Participant Contributors
- Part 1 Transmissible diseases with long development times and vaccination strategies
- Part 2 Dynamics of immunity (development of disease within individuals)
- Part 3 Population heterogeneity (mixing)
- Part 4 Consequences of treatment interventions
- Conflicts between the individual and communities in treatment and control
- The design and analysis of HIV clinical trials
- A theory of population dynamics used for improving control of viral diseases: AZT chemotherapy and measles vaccination policy
- The ONCHOSIM model and it use in decision support for river blindness control
- Invited Discussion
- Invited Discussion
- Hydatid disease
- Vaccines and herd immunity: consequences for vaccine evaluation
- An epidemiological approach to the evaluation of disease control strategies for intestinal helminth infections: an age structured model
- The control of directly transmitted infections by pulse vaccination: concepts and preliminary studies
- Operational models for the prevention of blindness
- Part 5 Prediction
Summary
Introduction
The development and use of ONCHOSIM for studying epidemiology and control of onchocerciasis is a joint effort of the Onchocerciasis Control Programme (OCP) and the Department of Public Health of the Erasmus University, Rotterdam. ONCHOSIM uses the so-called microsimulation technique for modelling stochastic systems (Habbema et al. 1995). This technique is characterized by mimicking individual life histories of humans and – in the case of ONCHOSIM – parasites. Biological factors and characteristics of control measures can be modelled in detail. Output of microsimulation models can be detailed (age- and sex-specific tables for comparison with detailed data sets) and simple (trends in prevalence during control). New insights can readily be incorporated by redefining relationships in the model and adapting the computer program which is used to perform simulations with the model.
A model that is built and quantified using the ONCHOSIM computer program has two types of assumptions. One concerns the deep model of the transmission cycle and disease process of onchocerciasis. The other concerns the description of the relevant characteristics (‘experimental setting’) of the village or region under study and of the control measures. The degree of complexity of both the deep model and the descriptive part depends on the aims of the model use, the available data and other considerations. When compared to most other current epidemiological models, the most pronounced difference is probably the level of detail in which the descriptive part is modelled. This is a reflection of the primary reason for involvement of modelling in OCP: supporting evaluation and decision making in a particular control programme (Remme et al. 1995).
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- Chapter
- Information
- Models for Infectious Human DiseasesTheir Structure and Relation to Data, pp. 360 - 380Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996
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