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Analyzing Surveillance data of Polio Cases in Pakistan and Afghanistan

In this article, you are invited to try out analyzing some data before watching the lecture where the data is analyzed in greater depth (Step 3.3).
A map of Pakistan and Afghanistan has polio cases plotted on the map in red, blue, and teal

Part 1: Above you can see a map used by polio eradicators showing recent polio cases in Pakistan and Afghanistan. You can also view the map here. Consider the distributions of people on the map. Each person represents a polio case.

  1. What does this map of cases tell you?
  2. What kinds of decisions could you make based on this information?

Part 2: Now, take a look at the right side of this map. Each different color represents polio cases that are closely related to each other. 

  1. What does this tell you about polio transmission?
  2. What kinds of decisions would you make based on this information?
  3. What new information does this environmental surveillance give you that you couldn’t have gotten otherwise?

© Copyright @ 2020 Johns Hopkins University. Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 license.
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Collecting and Using Data for Disease Control and Global Health Decision-Making

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