An inference procedure for host--vector and venereal disease models

Consider the problem of making inference about the initial relative infection rate ([mu]) of a disease which is directly transmitted by contact between members of two distinct groups. Here two related martingale-based techniques are used to derive estimators and associated standard errors for [mu]. The first technique requires complete information on the epidemic, the second only the total number of two groups who were infected and their initial population sizes. Explicit expressions for the estimators are obtained. Efficiency between the two martingale techniques is considered. A simulation study is done to assess the performance of the two estimators.Initial relative infection rate ([mu]) maximum likelihood estimation zero mean martingale