login
Become a member
Quick Registration
Full Registration Benefits -
Free Homepages for Doctors
Free Homepages for Hospitals
Free Homepages for Medical Conference
Free Homepages for NGO's
Personal Health Record Creation
Access to all Medical Slides
Access to all Jobs & Products Sale
Breakthrough Model to Determine Epidemic Potential of Bird Flu Developed
Luís Bettencourt and Ruy Ribeiro of Los Alamos Theoretical Division have come up with a novel approach to see subtle changes in epidemiological data to gain insight into whether bird flu can turn into a deadly global pandemic.
What we wanted to create was a mathematically rigorous way to account for changes in transmissibility. We now have a tool that will tell us in the very short term what is happening based on anomaly detection. What this method wont tell you is whats going to happen five years from now, said Bettencourt.
The duo started their study three years ago when the world was wondering whether avian influenza H5N1, with its relatively high human mortality rate, could become a frightening new pandemic, an many experts fearing if the virus could evolve into a form that would become transmissible from human to human.
The researchers wanted to create a smart methodology to look at changes in disease transmissibility, and for this, they developed an extension of standard epidemiological models that describes the probability of disease spread among a given population.
Then the model considered actual disease surveillance data gathered by health experts like the World Health Organization and looked for anomalies in the expected transmission rate versus the actual one. And thus, the model provides health experts actual transmission probabilities for the disease, based on this information.
|
|
|
 Comment & Contribute
|
- Health News Index
- News Quick Links
 | News Central | | Health Watch | |
| Latest Health News | | Health In Focus | |
| News Category (500+) | | Breaking Health News | |
| Popular News | | Celebrating Life | |
| Health News and Press Release | | Medindia - Exclusive | |
| News Photo Gallery | | India Special | |
| News Video Gallery | | Lifestyle and Wellness | |
| News From Other Resources | |||
 |
Flu
Complete Medindia Resources
|
| News Categories: |
| » | Report: A Lot of Americans Have No Access to Health Care |
| » | Greece Faces Humanitarian Crisis as Health Care Access Declines in EU, Doctors Group Warns |
| » | HCCI Report Says Rising Prices for Care Responsible for Increased Healthcare Costs for Privately Insured Americans |
| » | Treatment in ED is Based on Children's Insurance Status |
| » | US Spends Most on Healthcare Without Providing Superior Care |
| More Insurance News | |
|
Bird Flu Related News |
||||||||
| » | Vietnam Struggling To Combat New Cases Of Bird Flu | » | Mutant Bird Flu Studies are Freed for Publication | |||||
| » | Vietnam Approves $23 Million to Tackle Bird Flu | » | Chickens Culled in Nepal Farm | |||||
| » | What Causes Lung Injury in Severe Flu? | » | New Flu Virus Identified in Fruit Bats | |||||
| » | Bird Flu Alert For Bihar | » | Bird Flu More Common, Less Lethal Than Thought: Study | |||||
| Read More >> | ||||||||
