Infection risk to travelers going to dengue fever endemic regions.

The risk of dengue virus infection to travelers visiting dengue fever endemic regions was studied through the use of mathematical modeling. A Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) model is used to describe the transmission of dengue fever (DF) in an endemic region into which tourists enter. The dynamics of a new class of human, the traveler, is incorporated into the systems of first order differential equations in the SIR describing the dynamics of the transmission in the host region. Using standard dynamic analysis methods, the numbers of travelers who become infected with the dengue virus are calculated as a function of the length of time the tourist stays in the region.