糖心TV

Stefan Grosskinsky

Heather Robson

Magnus Richardson

Ebola Virus Disease in West Africa – the DIDE response

The recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa resulted in over 20,000 confirmed and probable cases and more than 11,000 deaths. In this seminar I will discuss Imperial’s contribution to the response as part of the World Health Organization’s Ebola Response team. We analysed the line-list data from the three most affected countries, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to provide forward predictions and evidence for transmission patterns and possible interventions.

In particular, I will discuss the analysis of data on potential exposures of cases to infected individuals. We use this data to explore correlations between risky behaviours and reproductive number. We explore when during the course of infection, contact is most likely to occur and with whom. Using the network of case – contact pairs we reveal a high degree of super-spreading, and use multivariable regression models to identify predictors of being named as a contact.

I will also discuss modelling work looking at the impact of rapid diagnostic tests for Ebola, which reduce the waiting time for results to hours instead of days.

Achieving elimination will be challenging, partly because of super-spreading, and will require sustained safe funeral practices and fast hospitalisation: monitoring continues in all three countries to promptly identify and eradicate any flare-ups. Continued real-time data capture, reporting and analysis are vital to track transmission patterns, inform resource deployment, and thus hasten elimination of the virus from the human population.

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Lunch Group 1

Gareth Alexander

Stefan Grosskinsky

Dwight Barkley