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Spread Of Disease Essay

1374 Words6 Pages

Alex Selawry

IB Math Exploration

Modeling the Spread of Infectious Diseases
December 2014

Introduction:

Infectious diseases, pandemics or epidemics have plagued (no pun intended) humankind for as long as we can remember. Some notable diseases we have fought through are for example the Black Death, or Black plague that crept up from Asia and killed an estimated 75 million people in the 13th century, wiping out 25 to 50% of the European population. HIV or AIDS is another well-known pandemic that arose in the 1980s from sub-Saharan Africa. Slowly destroying your immune system, which inevitably results in death, this disease currently affects more than 34 million people worldwide. In more recent news, a new Ebola epidemic has broken out in West Africa killing more than 3000 people. The WHO is working very hard to contain it, and a new cure is even said to be underway. …show more content…

With international trade and even travelling, diseases can be spread from country to country with ease. Epidemiology is the science behind patterns, causes and effects of diseases. Using statistics and other mathematical tools, they can calculate to a certain extent how a disease will impact the general population.

Since I have a personal interest in diseases, and the great majority of my relatives are doctors, I chose this topic as I thought it would be an interesting investigation. I could in addition use the knowledge gained from this exploration at medical school.

Using the SIR (Susceptible-Infectious-Removed) model, I will attempt to give an idea how such infectious diseases are

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