A Malaria Control Model Using Mobility Data: An Early Explanation of Kedougou's Case in Senegal
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Studies in malaria control cover many areas such as medicine, sociology, biology, mathematic, physic, computer science and so forth. Researches in the realm of mathematic are conducted to predict the occurrence of the disease and to support the eradication process. Basically, the modeling methodology is predominantly deterministic and differential equation based while selecting clinical and biological features that seem to be important. Yet, if the individual characteristics matter when modeling the disease, the overall estimation of the malaria is not done based on the health status of each individual but in a non-specified percentage of the global population. The goal of this paper is to propose a model that relies on a daily evolution of the individual's state, which depends on their mobility and the characteristics of the area they visit. Thus, the mobility data of a single person moving from one area to another, gathered thanks to mobile networks, is the essential building block to predict the outcome of the disease. We implement our solution and demonstrate its effectiveness through empirical experiments. The results show how promising the model is in providing possible insights into the failure of the disease control in the Kedougou region.
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