Ebola in West Africa: Model-Based Exploration of Social Psychological Effects and Interventions

In the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, sociocultural, psychological and higher-order disease-related dynamics play an important role in the speed of virus transmission. Although such effects may strongly affect outbreaks, they are often not included in transmission models. Here, we include different combinations of these effects in an extended system dynamics transmission model to generate and explore ensembles of plausible future dynamics of the Ebola outbreak and test the effectiveness of sets of policies in the presence of these effects under deep uncertainty. Accounting for these effects, it seems that policies currently being implemented to curb the ongoing Ebola epidemic are, or could be made, sufficient to curb the epidemic by early 2015 unless psychological and sociocultural effects remain adverse. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.