https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-023-04665-z
Regular Article
Study of the impact of information and limited medical resources on Zika prevalence: an optimal control approach
School of Mathematics, Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, 147004, Patiala, India
Received:
31
July
2023
Accepted:
5
November
2023
Published online:
12
December
2023
A compartment model for Zika management is proposed and studied which quantifies the impact of three key factors: information-induced self-protection on susceptible individuals, treatment of infected humans and insecticide treatment of the vector population. The model analysis reveals that the equilibrium points are locally stable and forward and backward bifurcations take place when the basic reproduction number varies around unity. To examine the impact of key model parameters, a sensitivity analysis is performed using normalized sensitivity index and partial rank correlation coefficient (PRCC) methods. To manage the economic burden and disease prevalence, the model is further extended to an optimal control problem considering information-induced self-protection, medical treatment of infected human and use of insecticide for mosquito culling as time-dependent control measures. Pontryagin’s maximum principle (PMP) is implemented to characterize the analytical paths for these control measures. Numerically, a comparative study is conducted to compare the effectiveness of seven different control policies. Our findings accentuate that the comprehensive implementation of all control measures is highly effective in reducing disease and overall costs (economically viable), whereas other policies show varying impacts based on control’s availability. Cost-effectiveness analysis is also performed using average cost-effective ratio (ACER) and incremental cost-effective ratio (ICER). It identifies treatment as the most cost-effective policy, though it excludes disease cost. Moreover, by varying the basic reproduction number within a suitable range, the impact of optimal control measures is compared for mild and severe epidemic scenarios. A case study for the Zika outbreak of Colombia (2016) is also conducted to strengthen the proposed study.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2023. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
