Twitter will help defeat dengue fever in Brazil
Last reviewed: 16.10.2021
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Specialists from Brazil have developed software for tracking the epidemic of dengue fever reported in the social network of Twitter.
Such a service has already been used to monitor the epidemic process during the pandemic of swine influenza A / H1N1. However, for the monitoring of dengue fever, as well as for the spread of infection at the scale of individual cities, it will be used for the first time.
A group of scientists from the two National Institutes of Science and the Federal University in Minas Gerais has developed a computer program that searches for tweet messages containing the word "dengue" and sorts such tweets according to the geographical location of the author's location. Then, messages with jokes and information about public campaigns are filtered out, leaving only those that describe the author's personal experience for analysis.
During the test launch of the program from January to May 2009, 2,447 tweets with the word "dengue" were analyzed. It turned out that the geography of the messages filtered by the program is clearly correlated with official statistics on the spread of the epidemic. During the period from December 2010 to April 2011, the program processed 181 845 tweets, but correlation analysis was postponed until official data were received.
If the program proves effective, in November 2011, when the next annual epidemic of dengue in Brazil is expected to begin, its practical application will begin.