Researchers from the University of Medellín began the implementation of an epidemiological computational model that will measure the effect of human mobility on the spread of this disease in the department of Chocó.
“We have the banks of the Atrato River and we are going to try to model the mobility of people within those riverside municipalities and we are going to implement an epidemiological model to try to model malaria peaks throughout the area,” explained Luis Eduardo Olmos Sánchez, a professor at the University’s Scientific Computing program.
The researchers are going to program a computational model and reproduce the epidemiological curves provided by the National Institute of Health, they will also take the mobility of the Chocoano municipalities based on their amount of population and the GPS data provided by cell phones would be accessed.
“We would also go to the fluvial transport companies to see if they give us access to information on the places where their users travel and how many passengers they handle daily,” the teacher clarified.
The study will focus on Chocó because, according to the Colombian Ministry of Health, 60% of the country’s malaria cases occur in the Pacific region, especially in this department.
On the other hand, the behavior of morbidity due to this disease in Colombia in the last 17 years has maintained a downward trend and registered a behavior with annual averages of 50,000 to 100,000 cases.
“The infection times for malaria are 15 days and if you are in the jungle, you get infected, then you go to the city, possibly another mosquito will bite you there and it infects another person and malaria may appear in the city when at first you relate it to the jungle”, explained Olmos Sánchez.
This research hopes to contribute to studies related to this disease in the country.
Through an epidemiological computer model, researchers from the University of Medellín will analyze the relationship between human mobility and the spread of malaria in Chocó, taking into account that 60% of cases occur in the Pacific region of Colombia of malaria.
“The real data on infections will be used first, that real data is provided by the INS, we also have to extract mobility data from people and we are going to extract it first from GPS cell phone data, with that data we are going to implement a theoretical model of how people move”, explained Luis Eduardo Olmos, Professor of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Medellín.
The researchers will also be able to get in touch with the fluvial transport companies to find out the behavior of the transfers of the people who can contribute to the mobility model.
“The temperature in places that were cold before is now hot, so this epidemic that was previously related to the jungle is going to leave its usual areas and reach the city, so we are preparing for the future,” Luis explained. Eduardo Olmos, Professor, Faculty of Sciences UdeMedellín.
It is estimated that between 50,000 to 100,000 cases of malaria may appear per year.