Effective control of chlamydia from a public health standpoint

Chlamydia has a significant impact on public health provision in the developed world. A large number of infections are asymptomatic, and untreated infection can lead to further complications such as PID and infertility. Using pair approximation equations we investigate the efficacy of control programmes for chlamydia on short timescales that are relevant to policymakers. Our results suggest that if the NCSP meets its long term goals a serious reduction in chlamydia prevalence is possible after ten years. By shifting focus from screening to contact tracing at lower prevalence it is possible to maintain cost-effectiveness and still control the disease, since we show that population prevalence has little impact on local prevalence around infected individuals. This implies that the chance of finding an infected individual through contact tracing remains largely unaffected by global population dynamics. Further to this, we show that it is possible to use a deterministic system to approximate large scale individual based models which have previously been used for decision making.