Evaluation of the epidemiological effectiveness of control strategies

Work carried out during the period 2006-2010

With regard to the methodological-centric approach, the main work concerned :

• Estimation of transmission parameters by Bayesian approach (applied to Coxiella burnetii infection in cattle) 
• The impact of Markov assumptions in epidemiological models 
• The influence of the transmission function in epidemiological models on the simulation of the spread of a pathogen 
• The singular perturbation approach to reduce the process represented in a model (applied to bovine viral diarrhea virus) 
• Global sensitivity analysis to study the outputs from epidemiological models (applied to bovine viral diarrhea virus and contagious bovine pleuropneumonia in cattle and Salmonella carriage in pigs) 

Concerning the pathogen/system-centric approach, the main work concerned :

• Characterization of the contact structure generated by animal movements (applied to cattle in Brittany)
• The spread of bovine viral diarrhoea virus in a metapopulation of dairy cattle herds
• Quantitative risk assessment of food-borne zoonoses applied to pig slaughterhouses 
• Identification of key control points and evaluation of control strategies :
  • bovine viral diarrhoea virus infection in dairy cattle herds 
  • of Mycobacteirum avium paratuberculosis infection in dairy cattle herds
  • of Coxiella burnetii infection in dairy cattle

Ongoing Projects

The work carried out by the MODEC team on metapopulation-scale modelling is aimed at predicting the a priori effectiveness of control strategies at the population level, and more specifically :

• Control of Salmonella infection (Modec_salmonella link) in pigs at the production chain level (contact: Catherine Belloc) and of Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis infection in cattle at the regional level (contact: Pauline Ezanno).
• The evaluation of different strategies for the vaccine control of Catarrhal Ovine Fever virus infection in cattle (Contact: Pauline Ezanno)
• Evaluation of different vector population control strategies, through the development of a model of mosquito population dynamics integrating meteorological criteria and vector site location) adaptable to other vector populations (e.g. Culicoides) (Contact: Pauline Ezanno)

Work carried out during the period 2006-2010