Project R-2371

Research Agreement for the WHO-project: " Influenza illness and vaccination in Asia: Data collection of Social Contacts and Mixing Patterns" (Research)

Infectious diseases such as influenza can be spread when individuals come into close contact with each other. Better knowledge of these contact patterns will facilitate a greater understanding of influenza transmission. This knowledge will help produce better predictive models of the spread of influenza, leading to improved estimates of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of alternative control programmes. Diary-based approaches have recently been used to determine these underlying contact patterns in Europe. This project extends this work to estimate patterns of social mixing that may be relevant to the spread of influenza in three South East Asian countries, and compare these estimates to similar data recently collected from East Asia and Europe. It is intended that by building up a cadre of individuals with experience of contact pattern studies, further work could be planned to refine estimates of contact patterns in SE Asia, and improve mathematical models of influenza spread in this region.

01 February 2010 - 31 August 2010