A LIVERPOOL doctor mapping how infectious diseases spread has been invited to a special showing of a new Hollywood film about a global pandemic.

Dr Jonathan Read, from the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Infection and Global Health, will be at a pre-screening of Contagion.

The film stars Kate Winslet as a doctor battling to save people.

Dr Read’s project looks at how infections spread.

It is hoped his research will help health experts deal more effectively with contagious diseases. He said: “Contagion portrays the events following an outbreak of a new infectious disease that has evolved to spread between humans, similar to SARS and bird flu.

“In particular, it looks at the way that the new infection requires close-contact between people or touching contaminated surfaces to transmit.”

Dr Read is researching how humans interact with each other, and how this affects the way disease is passed on, in partnership with a team from the University of Warwick.

Dr Read is looking for members of the public to complete an online survey about everyday social interactions.

He said: “We know that infectious diseases like influenza and measles are spread from person to person in a similar way. Unfortunately, we have a relatively poor understanding of the number of encounters made between people in the UK each day and how we all fit together into social networks through which infections spread.

“This makes it difficult to build accurate computer models of ‘contagion’ happening in the UK, as we rarely know what numbers to put into the model.