Evaluation of Ebola spreading in West Africa and decision of optimal medicine delivery strategies based on mathematical models

摘要

This paper mainly focuses on Ebola prediction and optimal location of emergency supplies delivery in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. First, an epidemic model called SEIIRHF model which takes the susceptible, the exposed, the infected, the recovered, the ones in hospital and the buried into consideration is developed to evaluate Ebola propagation. In this model, the infected and the ones in hospital are divided into two categories, serious infected and not serious, to simulate Ebola patients who are in ICU or not. Data of total and death cases from WHO website are used to curve fit. Then the curve is tested by data acquired recently. According to the curve, we predict there are 4000 total cases and 2500 death cases in Guinea, 9509 total cases and 4166 death cases in Liberia, 12,556 total cases and 3933 death cases in Sierra Leone by end of June, 2015. Then Clustering method is adopted to divide the most serious regions in a country into several parts, each part has a location of medicine delivery. Then two circular routes in different directions are decided by using TSP (Traveling Salesman Problem) method with consideration of medicine can be delivered within several hours by a car. Thus, DUBREKA, KOUROUSSA, and MACENTA in Guinea, Grand Bassa in Liberia and Tonkolili in Sierra Leone are selected as location of delivery respectively. Besides, Guinea has 6 delivery routes, Liberia has 2 delivery routes and Sierra Leone has 2 delivery routes. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.