The new Urban Dynamics Institute www.urbandynamics.org and ORNL scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) www.ornl.gov are working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation www.gatesfoundation.org to aid polio vaccination efforts in developing countries. ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science http://science.energy.gov.
Since the World Health Assembly www.globalhealth.gov announced the goal of eradicating polio in 1988, the number of polio cases has fallen by more than 99 percent, with the disease remaining endemic in only three countries, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria.
One problem faced by polio vaccination teams in these countries is the lack of accessible, reliable population, and settlement data which results in making strategizing vaccine operations increasingly difficult.
“The polio eradication program targets children primarily under the age of five for vaccination so you need to understand where people are and what percentage of the population could be five or younger to make the campaign efficient and successful,” according to the Urban
Dynamics Institute’s Founding Director, Budhendra Bhaduri.
Teams at the Institute will apply big data analysis to population dynamics in Nigeria allowing polio vaccination crews to better estimate the amount of vaccine needed in order to target priority areas so that vaccination crews can save time and money in eradicating the disease.
Oak Ridge is home to Titan, the second most powerful computer in the world, allowing researchers to analyze and draw conclusions from massive amounts of information. The data collected will then be assessed by the Urban Dynamics Institute to help polio vaccination teams focus their efforts in Nigeria, and contribute to the goal of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative www.polioeradication.org to eradicate polio worldwide.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is a partnership of the World Health Organization www.who.int, UNICEF www.unicef.org, CDC www.cdc.gov, Rotary International www.rotary.org, and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.