Optimizing Population Screening for Infectious Diseases: The Case of HAT Disease Control in D.R. Congo

Population screening by mobile units is crucial to control several infectious diseases. We consider the following planning problem: given a set of populations at risk, the expected evolution of the epidemic in these populations, and a fixed number of mobile units, which villages should be screened when? We present descriptive models for the development of the burden of disease over time which take screening explicitly into account, use these to develop planning policies, and numerically analyze them in the context of the control of sleeping sickness (HAT) in D.R. Congo.

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