A mathematical model of ebola virus disease: using sensitivity analysis to determine effective intervention targets

Mathematical models provide a useful framework to investigate real-world problems. They can be used in the context of disease dynamics to study how a disease will spread and how we can stop or prevent an outbreak. In December of 2013, an outbreak of Ebola began in the West African country of Guinea and later spread to Sierra Leone and Liberia. Health Organisations like the US Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization were tasked with providing aid to end the outbreak. We create an SEIR compartmental model of Ebola with a fifth compartment for the infectious deceased to model the dynamics of an Ebola outbreak in a village of a thousand people. We analyse the disease-free equilibrium of the model and formulate an equation for the eradication threshold R0. Sensitivity analyses points us in the direction of the transmission probability and the contact rate with infectious individuals as targets for intervention. We model the effect that vaccination and quarantine, together and separately, have on the outcome of the Ebola epidemic. We find that quarantine is a very effective intervention, but when combined with vaccination it can theoretically lead to eradication of the disease. Author