Mathematical Model of Hand-Foot-Mouth Disease (HFMD) in Thailand

Abstract

The Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) Model is a mathematical model which has been adopted to predict the spread of a disease. The purpose of this study was to predict the hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) outbreak by using the fraction of the population SIR epidemiological model. This study used secondary data from the Bureau of Epidemiology, Department of Disease Control, Ministry of Public Health Thailand that had been retrieved between 1st January 2008 and 31st December 2011, in population aged less than 5 years. Then Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) Model was built from data. The results from SIR simulation show that the estimated reproductive ratio (R0) equals to 1.42813. This ratio is greater than 1 indicating that the disease outbreak will be spread out in Thailand. The susceptible group population should be infected during an outbreak. In summary, HFMD will persist in Thailand under the R0 condition. This suggests that investigating the preventive measures to control the HFMD quickly and the number of infections would decline rapidly over a period of outbreak time.