THE SPREAD AND QUARANTINE OF HIV-INFECTION IN A PRISON SYSTEM

This paper is concerned with models for the spread of HIV in prisons. A simple deterministic model for the spread of HIV in a single prison is considered, a discrete-time stochastic analogue of it is then discu ssed, and some simulations of epidemics are provided. The model is gen eralized to a two-prison system in both the deterministic and stochast ic cases. Finally the possibilities for intervention in a prison are o utlined and a simple cost-effectiveness analysis in the context of scr eening and quarantine is undertaken. The computations for the stochast ic models make use of a new technique for bounding variability in a Ma rkov chain with a large state space.