Fuzzy Decision Making in Public Health Strategies

Making decision is one of the most fundamental activities of human beings (Klir & Yuan, 1995; Yager & Filev, 1994; Zadeh, 1973). This is particularly true in Public Health where decisions usually have relevance for millions of people. In the field of vaccination strategies design, decision making concerning the target population for the immunization program, the proportion of susceptibles to be vaccinated, the optimal age to immunize children and the nature of the strategy, e.g. selective or indiscriminate, are examples of the variables to be optimized, subject to a set of constraints. As an example, we present in this chapter a fuzzy model to decision making applied to the design of the vaccination campaign against measles in São Paulo, Brazil (Massad et al., 1999)