Modelling African horse sickness emergence and transmission in the South African control area using a deterministic metapopulation approach.

ABSTRACT: African horse sickness is an equine orbivirus transmitted by Culicoides Latreille biting midges. In the last 80 years, it has caused several devastating outbreaks in the equine population in Europe, the Far and Middle East, North Africa, South-East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. The disease is endemic in South Africa; however, a unique control area has been set up in the Western Cape where increased surveillance and control measures have been put in place. A deterministic metapopulation model was developed to explore if an outbreak might occur, and how it might develop, if a latently infected horse was to be imported into the control area, by varying the geographical location and months of import. To do this, a previously published ordinary differential equation model was developed with a m

SUBMITTER: de Klerk JN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10506717 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature