title: Strategies for containing Ebola in West Africa.
abstract: The ongoing Ebola outbreak poses an alarming risk to the countries of West Africa and beyond. To assess the effectiveness of containment strategies, we developed a stochastic model of Ebola transmission between and within the general community, hospitals, and funerals, calibrated to incidence data from Liberia. We find that a combined approach of case isolation, contact-tracing with quarantine, and sanitary funeral practices must be implemented with utmost urgency in order to reverse the growth of the outbreak. As of 19 September, under status quo, our model predicts that the epidemic will continue to spread, generating a predicted 224 (134 to 358) daily cases by 1 December, 280 (184 to 441) by 15 December, and 348 (249 to 545) by 30 December.
authors.affiliation: Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, USA.
authors.forename: Abhishek
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pandey
authors.affiliation: Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, USA. Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
authors.forename: Katherine E
authors.initials: KE
authors.lastname: Atkins
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA.
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Medlock
authors.affiliation: Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, USA.
authors.forename: Natasha
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Wenzel
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, USA.
authors.forename: Jeffrey P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Townsend
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, USA.
authors.forename: James E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Childs
authors.affiliation: Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Monrovia, Liberia.
authors.forename: Tolbert G
authors.initials: TG
authors.lastname: Nyenswah
authors.affiliation: Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, USA.
authors.forename: Martial L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Ndeffo-Mbah
authors.affiliation: Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, USA. Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, USA. alison.galvani@yale.edu.
authors.forename: Alison P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Galvani
mesh_terms: D000354:Africa, Western / Q000453:epidemiology; D003264:Containment of Biohazards / Q000379:methods*; D019142:Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000517:prevention & control*; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical