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Thursday, July 21, 2011

Brazil : Twitter could be used against dengue fever

Via UPI :

" Brazil could help track and slow the spread of dengue fever by using social networking sites like Twitter to track outbreaks, health researchers say.

Tracking diseases in real time through social media has been done before, as with the worldwide 2009 swine flu outbreak, but when dengue season begins in Brazil this November it will be the first time data on the scale of individual cities have been collected in this way, NewScientist.com reported Monday.

Software created by the Brazilian National Institutes of Science and Technology that filters tweets for mention of the word "dengue" will help identify a high correlation between the time and place where people tweet they have the fever and the official statistics for where the disease appears each season, health officials said."

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