A Blower-Like Approach to Predict the Effectiveness of Vaccines in a TB Dynamic

In this paper we present an extension of an automata approach proposed by S. Blower (1998) to describe the tuberculosis progression in a bi-dimensional space. In our extended model, the vaccination was included as an inhibitory variable in order to study its influence on the behavior of the tuberculosis spread. Our simulations showed that the earlier the vaccine is administered in the population, the lower the number of infected individuals, as expected for an in vivo system. However, our results also indicated that although the usual vaccination processes help reducing the strength of infection, the disease is not extinct, remaining the endemic state at low levels. These results strongly suggest that further actions are needed to increase the effectiveness of immunizations. Keyword: Simulation, epidemic, tuberculosis, cellularautomata.