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SEMINAR: ASYMPTOMATIC INFECTIONS IN ANIMALS AND PLANTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND ELIMINATION STRATEGIES

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Today's date is Friday, March 29, 2024
ASYMPTOMATIC INFECTIONS IN ANIMALS AND PLANTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND ELIMINATION STRATEGIES : This seminar is part of the Centre for Water Research seminar series. Other events...
Asymptomatic infection has long been an omnipresent feature of a diversity of diseases in animals (including humans) and plants. This phenomenon has received relatively little attention amidst the contemporary cacophony focused on disease elimination and even eradication.

Malaria transmission between asymptomatic carriers poses a particularly vexing problem, and raises serious questions about the tractability of elimination targets. In the context of plant pathology, Huanglongbing (HLB), or citrus greening, a vector-transmitted bacterial infection of citrus trees has wreaked havoc on citrus crops in Asia and Latin America and is currently a major problem for the Florida and California citrus industries.

One of the most under-studied aspects of HLB is disease transmission during the several years from initiation of infection in a grove until symptoms actually become manifest. We discuss case examples of malaria transmission in the Brazilian Amazon region and asymptomatic HLB in Florida, introducing recent experimental results integrated with spatially explicit mathematical modeling to provide deeper understanding of the phenomenon of asymptomatic carriers and the mitigation strategies that they suggest.

We briefly indicate lessons from malaria and HLB that carry over to a broad range of infectious diseases in animals and plants. A vast array of open research problems is also part and parcel of our topic.

Brief Biography,

Burton Singer is Adjunct Professor in the Emerging Pathogens Institute and Department of Mathematics at University of Florida. From 1994 - July, 2009, he was Professor of Demography and Public Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. He was formerly chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health and professor of economics and statistics at Yale University (1984 – 1993), and Professor of Statistics at Columbia University (1967 – 1984).

He has served as chair of the National Research Council Committee on National Statistics and as chair of the Steering Committee for Social and Economic Research in the World Health Organization Tropical Disease Research (TDR) program. He is currently on the Research Board of the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative, focused on both short- and long-term consequences of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

He has centered his research in three principal areas: identification of social, biological, and environmental risks associated with vector-borne diseases in the tropics; integration of psychosocial and biological evidence to characterize pathways to alternative states of health; and health impact assessments associated with economic development projects.

His research program has included studies of: the impact of migration and urbanization on malaria transmission in the western Amazon region of Brazil and in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; the biological correlates of well-being. and health consequences of gene- environment interactions focused on the social environment; and health impacts over time of large-scale development projects in the tropics, with particular emphasis on forcibly resettled communities.

He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (1994), the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies (2005) and was a Guggenheim fellow in 1981-1982. Ph.D. He received his PhD in Statistics from Stanford University in 1967.

Apologies for the short notice change.

PS* This seminar is free and open to the public & no RSVP required.

****All Welcome****
Speaker(s) Burton Singer Emerging Pathogens Institute, University of Florida
Location CWR Conference Room, Mathematics Link Building 223, The University of Western Australia
Contact Askale Abebe <[email protected]> : 6488 7565
URL http://epi.ufl.edu/burton-h-singer/
Start Fri, 04 Apr 2014 11:00
End Fri, 04 Apr 2014 12:00
Submitted by Askale Abebe <[email protected]>
Last Updated Tue, 10 Feb 2015 15:32
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