Descrizione

Malaria is one of the major public health problems for low income countries, a major global health priority, and it has also a dramatic economic impact. Standard tools traditionally used to assess the public health and economic impact of malaria control interventions, such as efficacy trials and static cost-effectiveness analyses, capture only short term effects. They fail to take into account long term and dynamic effects due to the complex dynamic of malaria, and to the interactions between intervention effectiveness and health systems. This study aimed at developing integrated mathematical models for predicting the epidemiologic and economic effects of malaria control interventions. The study combines innovative mathematical models of malaria epidemiology with innovative modeling of the health system and of the costs and effects of malaria control interventions. These approaches are applied to simulate the epidemiological impact and the cost-effectiveness of hypothetical malaria vaccines. Combining advanced stochastic simulation modeling of malaria epidemiology with health system dynamic modeling is a crucial innovation proposed by the approaches presented in this thesis.