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In-Depth Information
describing the epidemiology and consequences of HPV for Poland in the envi-
ronment of Vensim (Figure 1) based on our previous model for Sweden [14].
We adapted it to the demographic structure of Poles (unfortunately most of the
parameters concerning sexuality and medical properties were estimated based
on data for other populations - mostly Nordic - Table 3). The results obtained
for vaccination strategies agreed with the work of scientists sponsored by the
Merc AND Co [15] and GalaxySmith [16] (vaccine producers). Model contains
age structure, because sexual behavior, as well as other medical parameters, is
age depended. The existing model consists only of the main fraction of the pop-
ulation (heterosexual [17]) and takes into account the demographic changes over
form last 25 years and predicts for next 25. Sexuality (number of new sexual part-
ners in a given time interval) was randomly chosen in every step of simulation
from empirical distribution for subgroup from given age category. Unfortunately,
we do not have Polish data with such resolution. Only few of the Polish stud-
ies about sexuality consider aspects interesting for us and none of them was
performed on big enough, representative sample (according Izdebski's research
[18]). We observe the change of sexual behavior (average number of partners is
increasing over time [19]), and the model will replicate that.
2 Problem Statement
The time between getting infected by HPV and developing cancer can be twenty
years or more, therefore a dynamic model of human behavior would be very
useful, so that simulations can be made and different scenarios compared [3].
Fig. 2.
Fitting area for calibaring model parameters. Number of new cancer cases for
different age cohorts (20
−
24, 25
−
34, 35
−
64,
≥
65) from historical registry (pl) are
compared with simulated values.
