Modelling of infectious diseases for providing signal of epidemics: a measles case study in Bangladesh.

Abstract

The detection of unusual patterns in the occurrence of diseases is an important challenge to health workers interested in early identification of epidemics. The objective of this study was to provide an early signal of infectious disease epidemics by analyzing the disease dynamics. A two-stage monitoring system was applied, which consists of univariate Box-Jenkins model or autoregressive integrated moving average model and subsequent tracking signals from several statistical process-control charts. The analyses were illustrated on January 2000-August 2009 national measles data reported monthly to the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) in Bangladesh. The results of this empirical study ..