A Stuctured Discrete Model for Dengue Fever Infections and the Determination of R0 from Age-Stratified Serological Data

A time discrete age-structured model for modeling the spread of Dengue fever is built. The demographic dynamics is introduced trough the Leslie model. The basic reproductive number is introduced, and an approximation for it is built. The final age distributions for the susceptibles, infected and removed are obtained, and we show how they can be used to produce an actual estimate for R 0 from stratified serological data. An application is made using data from Recife, Brazil, and explicit estimates for R 0 are given.