Contribution of Individual-based Models in malaria elimination strategy design

• Published in: Malaria journal 2010-10, Vol.9 (S2), p.P9-P9, Article P9
• Main Authors: Ferrer, Jordi, Prats, Clara, López, Daniel, Valls, Joaquim, Gargallo, Domingo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Human diseases; Local government; Malaria; Mathematical models; Poster Presentations; Technicians; Vector-borne diseases
• ISSN: 1475-2875; 1475-2875
• DOI: 10.1186/1475-2875-9-S2-P9

Background Global strategies to fight malaria consist of three components: medical coverage scale-up in the affected regions, sustained control of the disease and increasing local elimination. These strategies normally consider long-term temporal scales of the order of the decade and are typically formulated either in technical terms or through mathematical models that are not easily communicated to non-experts (e.g. local people that act as malaria control technicians and local governments). Yet, global strategies finally lie on local specific interventions, carried out by agents with a limited scope of action and covering short spans. Field actions against malaria typically have to struggle against logistic limitations and must be very well coordinated in order to succeed. There is a need for models that can connect field actors with strategy designers in order to tackle the specific constraints of each particular intervention, and to redefine objectives on the fly, in accordance with the field results.