Abstract

A host of new diseases, like HIV/AIDS, BSE, Avian Flu, West Nile Virus and others have appeared on the scene during the last twenty five years and undoubtedly, more will come in the coming years. To tackle these illnesses, the cooperation of modelers, mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists, and others, and of researchers from the medical community is absolutely essential. Modeling is important because it gives important insight into the method of treatment. In the case of HIV/AIDS, for example, mathematical modeling indicated that a combination of both protease inhibitors and reverse transcriptase inhibitors would be far more effective than any one of these two drugs. The purpose of this conference is to bring all the people working in the area of epidemiology under one roof and encourage mutual interaction.