The increasing level of disease control by vaccination jointly with the growing standard of living and health of modern societies could favour the spread of exemption as a "rational" behaviour towards vaccination. Rational exemption implies that families will tend to relate the decision to vaccinate their children to the available information on the state of the disease. Using an SIR model with information dependent vaccination we show that rational exemption might make elimination of the disease an unfeasible task even if coverages as high as 100% are actually reached during epochs of high social alarm. Moreover, we show that rational exemption may also become responsible for the onset of sustained oscillations when the decision to vaccinate also depends on the past history of the disease.

Vaccinating behavior, information, and the dynamics of SIR vaccine preventable diseases

SALINELLI, Ernesto
2007-01-01

Abstract

The increasing level of disease control by vaccination jointly with the growing standard of living and health of modern societies could favour the spread of exemption as a "rational" behaviour towards vaccination. Rational exemption implies that families will tend to relate the decision to vaccinate their children to the available information on the state of the disease. Using an SIR model with information dependent vaccination we show that rational exemption might make elimination of the disease an unfeasible task even if coverages as high as 100% are actually reached during epochs of high social alarm. Moreover, we show that rational exemption may also become responsible for the onset of sustained oscillations when the decision to vaccinate also depends on the past history of the disease.
File in questo prodotto:
File Dimensione Formato  
Versione_pubblicata.pdf

file disponibile solo agli amministratori

Tipologia: Altro materiale allegato
Licenza: DRM non definito
Dimensione 1.14 MB
Formato Adobe PDF
1.14 MB Adobe PDF   Visualizza/Apri   Richiedi una copia

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11579/22803
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus 182
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? 167
social impact