Design of a Real-Time Epidemic Alert System for Cross Border Disease Control and Epidemic Management

The key challenge with Epidemics includes its ability to spread rapidly and impact several large communities with high fatality rates. These characteristics make it difficult and very expensive to manage epidemics once it has broken out. History is replete with several cases of epidemic out breaks spreading from the point of origin and being transmitted to other areas resulting in the deaths of several thousands and in some cases millions of the inhabitants. The distance of the spread in the early 19th century was limited due to the limitations in travel speed and distance but this did not reduce the death rates of these diseases. The small pox disease was recorded to have killed more than 20% of the population of Athens in Greece. The great plague of London was recorded to have started in China in 1334 but spread along the trade routes wiping out entire towns. Florence in Italy lost a third of its entire 90,000 residents in the first six months with Europe losing an estimated 25 Million people. In 1633, Massachusetts which hitherto had been free from small po