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DISEASE ECOLOGY

Vaccination under uncertainty

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 2, pages 1350–1351 (2018)Cite this article

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A synthesis of epidemiological, laboratory and economic data provides suggestions for optimal vaccination strategies against foot-and-mouth disease in east African livestock.

Vaccination is potentially an extremely powerful tool for controlling infectious disease. However, decisions on whether and how to deploy vaccines are often complex and interdisciplinary, requiring input from fields ranging from pathogen biology and epidemiology through to economics. Optimizing vaccination deployment is especially difficult in the face of major uncertainty in any of these areas — and particularly where economic constraints limit what interventions can be afforded. A signal example of this problem is the case of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) virus outbreaks among livestock in eastern Africa. A lack of data on the economic impact of the disease, and the existence of multiple viral strains that infect wildlife and domestic hosts, together with cost constraints precluding mass vaccination, have combined to limit design and deployment of control options. As they report in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Casey-Bryars et al.1 used a combination of socioeconomic analysis, outbreak surveillance, viral sequencing and serological surveys to provide a broad picture of this disease in the region, and recommendations for its control.

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Fig. 1: Sampling opportunities and epidemic dynamics.

References

  1. Casey-Bryars, M. et al. Nat. Ecol. Evol. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0636-x (2018).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Max S. Y. Lau & Bryan T. Grenfell

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  1. Max S. Y. Lau
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  2. Bryan T. Grenfell
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Correspondence to Max S. Y. Lau.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Lau, M.S.Y., Grenfell, B.T. Vaccination under uncertainty. Nat Ecol Evol 2, 1350–1351 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0652-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0652-x

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