New methodologies for the estimation of population vulnerability to diseases: a case study of Lassa fever and Ebola in Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

ABSTRACT: Public health practitioners require measures to evaluate how vulnerable populations are to diseases, especially for zoonoses (i.e. diseases transmitted from animals to humans) given their pandemic potential. These measures would be valuable to support strategic and operational decision making and allocation of resources. Although vulnerability is well defined for natural hazards, for public health threats the concept remains undetermined. Here, we develop new methodologies to: (i) quantify the impact of zoonotic diseases and the capacity of countries to cope with these diseases, and (ii) combine these two measures (impact and capacity) into one overall vulnerability indicator. The adaptive capacity is calculated from estimations of disease mortality, although the method can be adapted for

SUBMITTER: Kajero O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6558567 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature