Leveraging Core Groups -- A New Way to Protect Against Infectious Trachoma

-
Investigator: Thomas Lietman, MD
Sponsor: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Location(s): Ethiopia; Tanzania; Gambia; Niger; India

Description

At the Proctor Foundation we use simple mathematical models to help us understand infection transmission rates as well as the most appropriate treatment plans for trachoma, the world’s leading cause of infectious blindness. We fit our data to stochastic epidemiological transmission models to help us understand how quickly the disease is spreading. From there we can estimate what may be the best treatment plan and then later compare our predictions to the actual results in our longitudinal studies.

In this study, we use mathematical models and cross-sectional survey data to determine the minimum number of people in a community who need to be treated for trachoma in order to halt transmission of the disease.