Influenza in Mexico

Description:
Little is known about the mortality and morbidity impact of seasonal and pandemic influenza in Mexico. In this project, we plan to build a model for evaluating vaccination strategies for pandemic influenza in Mexico, tailored to the Mexican demographic and epidemiologic situation.

Mexico started a vaccination program against seasonal influenza in 2004. Annual subsidized national influenza vaccination campaigns are conducted from October to December in children 6 to 23 months old and adults older than 65 years, as well as other groups affected by chronic-degenerative ailments with higher risk of developing complications from influenza infection. Although Mexico has relied on other countries for influenza vaccine production, the World Health Organization announced this year that Mexico, along with Brazil, India, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam would receive grants to establish in-country manufacturing capacity for flu vaccines. It will take these countries three to five years to begin producing their own vaccine supply.

We are building a model for evaluating vaccination strategies in Mexico, tailored to Mexican population age structure, rooted in seasonal influenza data from Mexico and integrating age-specific parameters of vaccine effectiveness, hospitalization risk and death. Because there is important uncertainty regarding the epidemiology of the emerging pandemic influenza virus and vaccine related parameters, we plan to perform extensive uncertainty and sensitivity analyses. The end product would be a flexible piece of software, where input parameters could be easily updated in real time as new data becomes available, and useful to public health officials in designing optimal vaccination strategies against pandemic influenza.