20 Stage-Structured Immunity

Immunity to malaria has been described as being weak and immunity has a poor memory. In quantitative terms, this means that almost every aspect of infection is affected by the history of exposure, and exposure accumulates with age.

In developing our models so far, we have ignored age as a factor in malaria epidemiology. In analyzing the models, we looked for steady states or stable temporal orbits. These analyses give a misleading impression of malaria.

The first model to examine malaria immunity was developed for the Garki Project [74]. We will present the model, for historical reasons, and then we will

it is much easier to formulate models for malaria infection dynamics in cohorts as they age.

References

74.

Dietz K, Molineaux L, Thomas A. A malaria model tested in the African savannah. Bull World Health Organ. 1974;50: 347–357. Available: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Citation&list_uids=4613512