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The
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a $10
million grant to the University
of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and its
partners at the Pennsylvania
State's Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics and Imperial
College London to create computational models and simulations
that will help guide the development of new vaccine technologies
and epidemic control strategies to stop the spread of infectious
diseases.
The project is called the Vaccine
Modeling Initiative. The GeoVISTA Center's
role is focusing on one of the study cases: Measles in
Niger.
Study Site
Niger, one of the poorest and least developed countries in
the world, lies in sub-Saharan Africa. It is mainly covered
by the Sahara desert (> 80%) and is continually threatened
by desertification and periodic droughts. Northern Niger is
sparsely populated with much of the population residing in
the tropical region along the southern border with Nigeria.
Niger has a population estimate of 15,306,252 (CIA 2009) with
one of the highest birth rates in the world (51.6 births per
1000 population). Although known for its mining (uranium),
much of the economy in Niger is subsistence with some agricultural
exports.
Niger has had difficulty controlling the spread of many diseases
some of which have long been eradicated in developed countries
(such as polio) , owing to the combination of an extremely
high birth rate, minimal funding for government services,
and a history of political struggles and insurgency since
gaining independence in 1960. Measles, in particular, has
attracted international cooperation from aid groups including
the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, the American
Red Cross, the United Nations Foundation, and the U.S. Centers
for Disease Control. All of whom contributed to efforts to
control the spread of the disease through the Measles Initiative
in 2001 (Ferrari, Grais et al. 2008). The Measles Initiative
set a goal of reducing the incidence of measles by 90% by
2010, and following its implementation of increased vaccination
coverage in 2004/2005, measles infections in Niger fell from
40,000 cases annually in 2003 to 476 in 2006 (UNICEF 2008),
demonstrating the effectiveness of targeted, aggressive administration
of inexpensive vaccines.
GeoVISTA's role in this project
In order to continue to effectively target vaccination programs
in countries like Niger it is important to understand the
spatial dynamics of the disease, specifically to understand
patterns of disease movement both in space and time. Thus,
we at GeoVISTA are providing expertise in geospatial visual
analytics, geospatial analysis and geographic data gathering
to:
- Support investigation of the occurrence of disease in
space and time through novel application of visualization
methods, particularly through interactive map animation.
One part of this work is focused on advancing knowledge
about the impacts of map representation form (choropleth
versus schematic maps) and data aggregation/smoothing on
patterns that can be identified.
- Improve knowledge of patterns of human movement by looking
at a variety of causal factors that may result in migration
of people between locations in Niger as well as between
locations in Niger and its surrounding countries. To accomplish
this we are developing and applying new information seeking
methods that allow analysts to forage a variety of text
documents on the web (e.g. from news archives), generate
relevance rankings, and explore the place, time, and concept
components of the documents through linked map, timeline,
concept map, and documents views.
By exploring these we hope to improve our understanding of
the patterns of human movement in Niger, which is not currently
well documented. Achieving this will further aid modeling
of disease dynamics in this region as well as in other developing
countries.
More about Measles in Niger: http://www.who.int/countries/ner/en/index.html
Predicting the unpredictable: measles outbreaks in sub-Saharan
Africa: http://www.cidd.psu.edu/research/synopses/measles-outbreaks-niger
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