Predicting spread of infectious disease
M. Elizabeth Halloran and Ira Longini, biostaticians
When the World Health Organization declared smallpox eradicated in 1980, there was a giddy overconfidence that the deadly struggle against the microbial world was ending.
But Elizabeth Halloran who studied tropical diseases in the early 1980s, when there was waning interest in the topic, was not convinced microbes had been subdued, much less conquered.
Nor was Ira Longini, whose travels through Latin America brought him face to face with tuberculosis, syphilis and other infectious diseases that were presumably under control.
With research funding and drug development for such diseases in full retreat at the time, Halloran and Longini forged paths in the field of biomathematics and biostatistics to study the spread of infectious diseases. Now, as collaborators, they're among the world's leaders in the field, their expertise sought widely in the struggle against new and resurgent infectious diseases. During the last year, they have consulted with federal and state officials and have been consulted by world health organizations to help develop intervention plans to control potential pandemics, such as avian flu.
The threat of a pandemic flu with the potential to kill tens of millions remains a top concern of public health officials worldwide. HIV, malaria and tuberculosis kill as many as 6 million people each year. Tuberculosis alone is expected to infect as many as 1 billion people in the next 20 years. Small as they are, microbes make up 60 percent of the planet's biomass.
It's within this context that Halloran and Longini collaborate on mathematical models that predict the spread of disease and simulate intervention strategies to save lives.
Using powerful computers to track the potential path of infectious diseases, the duo believe their approach could help to save the lives of hundreds of millions of people, particularly against pandemic flu, which unchecked could spread across the globe in a matter of months.
In one of their models, Longini and Halloran tracked how quickly pandemic flu would move across the United States if nothing were done. In a simulated 60 days, the disease had spread to every corner of the map, with tens of millions dead. They developed other models to help predict which interventions-such as vaccination, keeping children out of schools and asking people to work from home-would most effectively control spread of the disease and save the most lives.
It's a scary scenario, but Longini and Halloran believe the tools are in place to save the world from disaster. And not just from influenza.
"We hope that the tools we're developing will be used for all emerging diseases," Longini said.
"You can't control disease," Halloran said, "but you can intervene to save lives."
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