Publications
Chosen filters:
Chosen filters:
Infectious livestock diseases in the Republic of Zaïre Institute of Tropical Medicine
The KIzSS network, a sentinel surveillance system for infectious diseases in day care centers: study protocol Institute of Tropical Medicine
BACKGROUND: Day care-associated infectious diseases are widely recognized as a public health problem but rarely studied. Insights into their dynamics and their association with the day care setting are important for effective decision making in management of infectious disease control. This paper describes the purpose, design and potential of our national multi-center, day care-based sentinel surveillance network for infectious diseases (the ...
Mathematical models used to inform study design or surveillance systems in infectious diseases University of Antwerp Hasselt University
Background: Mathematical models offer the possibility to investigate the infectious disease dynamics over time and may help in informing design of studies. A systematic review was performed in order to determine to what extent mathematical models have been incorporated into the process of planning studies and hence inform study design for infectious diseases transmitted between humans and/or animals. Methods: We searched Ovid Medline and two ...
Population age and household structures shape transmission dynamics of emerging infectious diseases University of Antwerp KU Leuven Hasselt University
Host population demographics and patterns of host-to-host interactions are important drivers of heterogeneity in infectious disease transmission. To improve our understanding of how population structures and changes therein influence disease transmission dynamics at the individual and population level, we model a dynamic age- and household-structured population using longitudinal microdata drawn from Belgian census and population registers. At ...
Framework for the design and operation of high-level isolation units: consensus of the European Network of Infectious Diseases Ghent University
Patients with highly infectious diseases require safe, secure, high-quality medical care with high-level infection control, which may be most effectively delivered by specially trained staff in the setting of a high-level isolation unit (HLIU). The European Network of Infectious Diseases is a European Commission co-funded network of experts in the management of highly infectious diseases from national (or regional) centres designated for the ...
Optimizing agent-based transmission models for infectious diseases University of Antwerp Hasselt University
Background Infectious disease modeling and computational power have evolved such that large-scale agent-based models (ABMs) have become feasible. However, the increasing hardware complexity requires adapted software designs to achieve the full potential of current high-performance workstations. Results We have found large performance differences with a discrete-time ABM for close-contact disease transmission due to data locality. Sorting the ...
Infectious diseases epidemiology, quantitative methodology, and clinical research in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic University of Antwerp KU Leuven Hasselt University Ghent University
Starting from historic reflections, the current SARS-CoV-2 induced COVID-19 pandemic is examined from various perspectives, in terms of what it implies for the implementation of non-pharmaceutical interventions, the modeling and monitoring of the epidemic, the development of early-warning systems, the study of mortality, prevalence estimation, diagnostic and serological testing, vaccine development, and ultimately clinical trials. Emphasis is ...
Personal life and working conditions of trainees and young specialists in clinical microbiology and infectious diseases in Europe University of Antwerp
The purpose of this investigation was to assess the balance between the personal and professional lives of trainees and young European specialists in clinical microbiology (CM) and infectious diseases (ID), and determine differences according to gender, country of training, workplace and specialty. The Steering Committee of the Trainee Association of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) devised a ...
Social contact patterns in an individual-based simulator for the transmission of infectious diseases (Stride) University of Antwerp
Individual-based models are convenient to study the spread of infectious diseases in combination with heterogeneous social mixing patterns. In this paper, we present an open-source and generic, individual-based simulator for the transmission of infectious diseases (Stride) in which social contact rates are dependent on both the context and the age of the individuals. Using a case study, we illustrate the effect of different social contact ...