Toward a Containment Strategy for Smallpox Bioterror: An Individual-Based Computational Approach
Joshua M. Epstein, Cummings Derek A. T., Shubha Chakravarty, Ramesh M. Singa, Donald S. BurkeBooks.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
In the United States, routine smallpox vaccination ended in 1972. The level of immunity remaining in the U.S. population is uncertain, but is generally assumed to be quite low. Smallpox is a deadly and infectious pathogen with a fatality rate of 30 percent. If smallpox were successfully deployed as an agent of bioterrorism today, the public health and economic consequences could be devastating.Toward a Containment Strategy for Smallpox Bioterror describes the scientific results and policy implications of a simulation of a smallpox epidemic in a two-town county. The model was developed by an interdisicplinary team from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Brookings Institution Center on Social and Economic Dynamics, employing agent-based and other advanced computational techniques. Such models are playing a critical role in the crafting of a national strategy for the containment of smallpox by providing public health policymakers with a variety of novel and feasible approaches to vaccination and isolation under different circumstances. The extension of these techniques to the containment of emerging pathogens, such as SARS, is discussed.
Author Description:
Joshua M. Epstein and Shubha Chakravarty are with the Brookings Institution. Derek A. T. Cummings, Ramesh M. Singha, and Donald S. Burke are with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Synopsis
Aimed at public health researchers and policy makers, this slim volume presents a county-level individual based computational model of a smallpox epidemic. The authors critically review the two main vaccination strategies currently under discussion a nd propose a hybrid strategy based upon the model. The authors are affiliated with the Brookings Institution and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR