Article by Dr Jonathan Keith, Health Canal
The number of reported Ebola cases is doubling roughly every five weeks in Sierra Leone, and in as little as two to three weeks in Liberia.
The number of reported cases globally is projected to reach 10,000 by the end of October. The actual number of cases may be twice the official figure. So how are such figures estimated – and what can bioinformatics do to help control the disease?
The 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa appeared suddenly and spread rapidly, and is thought to have started with a single animal-to-human transfer in December last year. It’s an example of an emerging infectious disease (EID): one that has newly appeared in a population or has undergone a rapid increase in incidence. SARS and various strains of avian influenza are examples of EIDs.
The annual BioInfoSummer conference and training workshop is an initiative of the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute. This year the event is being hosted by Monash University on 1-5 December.
