Canadian number-crunchers gather in Africa to build disease-fighting models
Reported November 05, 2007
VANCOUVER – Mathematics could be the newest weapon in the fight against HIV-AIDs.
Canadian and African mathematicians, scientists and health officials are travelling to Kampala, Uganda for a first-of-its-kind meeting next week to discuss the spread of diseases such as AIDS or tuberculosis.
Researchers hope to create mathematical models to track the transmission of infectious diseases.
Mathematical modelling will be used to simulate the outbreak of a disease in a specific area so doctors can test the effectiveness of programs to control and contain it.
The three-day meeting is being organized by Burnaby, B.C. math research network MITACS (the Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems) and has attracted mathematicians from across Canada as well as researchers from universities in Uganda, Kenya, Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Nearly 40 million people worldwide, are infected with HIV-AIDs and more than one million die each year from tuberculosis.