Directly transmitted infections modeling considering an age-structured contact rate

Mathematical models dealing with childhood viral infections consider the sp read of disease according to the law of mass action. This law states that t here are random encounters (or contacts) among susceptible and infectious i ndividuals. Therefore, mathematical descriptions of the transmission of inf ections are heavily dependent on the assumptions concerning the contact rat e. In order to develop an age-structured contact rate model, a pattern of c ontacts among individuals in a community is developed by stochastic process es. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.