AMMCS-2013 Semi-Plenary Talk

The spatio-temporal spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis

Julien Arino (University of Manitoba)

Abstract: Tuberculosis is, after HIV/AIDS, the second largest cause of infectious disease induced death. It is estimated that in 2011, it killed 1.4 million people worldwide. Tuberculosis is also a disease of poverty, as contributing factors to its spread include poor and overcrowded living conditions, poor health conditions, etc. As a consequence, over 95% of new infections and deaths by tuberculosis occur in developping countries.

We formulate a model for tuberculosis in a single population that includes three strains: a drug-sensitive strain, MDR-TB and XDR-TB. We study the model mathematically and show, in particular, that the bifurcation structure of the whole model is governed by the behaviour of the XDR-TB strain. We then extend the model to a metapopulation setting, in which each country is a vertex in a multi-digraph, endowed with a system for the single population case. Weighted arcs between the vertices represent the rate of travel of individuals between the countries. We study the resulting large-scale system. Finally, we proceed to numerical experiments with realistic travel and population data.

This is a joint work with K. Khan (University of Manitoba) and I. Soliman (St Michael's Hospital, Toronto).

Julien Arino received his PhD in 2001 from Université Joseph Fourier in Grenoble, France in affiliation with INRIA Sophia Antipolis and the Villefranche-sur-mer Oceanological Observatory. He held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Victoria (Jan 2001-Dec 2002) and McMaster University (Jan 2003-Jun 2005).

Since 2005, he has been a faculty member at the University of Manitoba. He is currently a member of the Bio.Diaspora Project, which is based at St Michael's Hospital (Toronto), and the Centre for Disease Modelling, which is hosted at York University.