MODELING THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ZOONOTIC DISEASES IN THE SUDAN (Case study Rift Valley Fever 2006/2007)

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Accurate assessments of the epidemiological and economic impacts of an animal disease

require a multidisciplinary technical groups and cooperation between veterinarian, economist

and statisticians.

This thesis try to use different epidemiological parameters with different economic analysis

techniques making use of mathematical equation as estimators’ ( econometrics) to develop

dynamic space-time predictive models of risk for infectious animal disease epidemics.

Many of livestock diseases in the Sudan which are endemic/or epidemic with potentially vast

socioeconomic impacts.

Rift valley fever (RVF) which have received wide coverage in the recent media, which causes

a great panic at domestic consumers and producers ,the occurrence of such animal disease

outbreaks makes determination of optimal economic losses is difficult, where the policy

makers were based on relative economic impacts of different response based on little prior

information.

The motivation for this thesis was the recent real RVF outbreak or rumors in Sudan 2007,

(that have different economic impacts at both micro and macro level, however we are

interested in developing more general techniques that can be applied to other animal diseases.

However it has been shown that the dynamics of the disease or rumors of the disease are not

uniform across the whole of the Sudan and can vary significantly across different spatial

regions. Of concern here is exploring whether modeling at a smaller spatial scale can provide

more useful measures of risk and guide the development of more efficient control policies.

I begin by introducing some of the main epidemiological issues and concepts involved in

modeling infectious animal diseases, from the animal unit through to the herd population, to

national level, then discuss the various modeling techniques that have been applied

previously and show they were related to various epidemiological principals discussed in the

separate sections. I then highlight some limitations with these approaches and offer potential

ways in which economic analysis techniques could be used to overcome some of these

problems.

Lastly we formulate a spatial economic-epidemiological model and fit it to the simulation

data-gap set with some simple initial covariates that fail to capture the dynamics of the

disease. With this regard the cost benefit analysis, partial budget and market theories were

applied to estimate the economics of RVF disease and its rumors.

We also use these simulations to explore economic impacts in which space-time predictions

of the hazard of infection can be used as a means of targeting control policies to areas of

‘high-risk’ of infection, that analyzed with different economic methods mainly cost benefit

analysis and partial budget method.

The thesis motivates a new modeling framework that is sensitive to the static and dynamics

of disease, based on production function parameters, through the use of an integrated system

dynamics or static framework.

In this thesis, we develop new approaches and frameworks for the analysis of economic

impacts of RVF-diseases outbreak and its rumors. We propose greater utilization of "bottomup"

analyses, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of value chain and information

economics approaches in impact analyses and stressing the importance of improved

integration between the epidemiology of disease and its relationships with economic

behavior.

This research focused on the economic assessment of the livestock sector and human

vulnerability to a Rift Valley Fever (RVF) outbreak.

Livestock economic impact assessment is done by using an integrated model to examine the

extent of RVF spread in the Al-Gazira state livestock population and its consequences where

ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF INFECTIOUS ANIMAL DISEASES IN THE SUDAN

(Case study Rift Valley Fever / 2006 -2007) 12

in Khartoum state the economic assessment was taken from the RVF-rumors and its emerging

risk probability.

Human impact assessment utilized an inferential procedure, which comprises of a cost of

illness calculation to assess the dollar cost of human illness and deaths, as well as a disability

adjusted life year to give an estimate of the burden of the disease on public health as whole.

This thesis has outlined the key assumptions underlying economic model choice and has

given an overview of how the linked model has been developed of the three most often used

economic models –CCBA, PE, and market value chain.

The choice will depend on the disease characteristic, epidemic model, restriction policies,

risk attitudes and perception, and other economic externalities.

Results indicate substantial potential loss to the Sudan, where combined livestock and human

national costs ranged from six to sevenbillion SDG.