Investigating the Effects of Intervention Strategies on Pneumonia and HIV/AIDS Coinfection Model

Abstract

HIV/AIDS and pneumonia coinfection have imposed a major socioeconomic and health burden throughout the world, especially in the developing countries. In this study, we propose a compartmental epidemic model on the spreading dynamics of HIV/AIDS and pneumonia coinfection to investigate the impacts of protection and treatment intervention mechanisms on the coinfection spreading in the community. In the qualitative analysis of the model, we have performed the positivity and boundedness of the coinfection model solutions; the effective reproduction numbers using the next-generation operator approach; and both the disease-free and endemic equilibrium points’ local and global stabilities using the Routh-Hurwiz and Castillo–Chavez stability criteria, respectively. We performed the sensitivity analysis of the model parameters using both the forward normalized sensitivity index criteria and numerical methods (simulation). Moreover, we carried out the numerical simulation for different scenarios to investigate the effect of model parameters on the associated reproduction number, the effect of model parameters on the model state variables, and the solution behavior and convergence to the equilibrium point(s) of the models. Finally, from the qualitative analysis and numerical simulation results, we observed that the disease-spreading rates, protection rates, and treatment rates are the most sensitive parameters, and we recommend for stakeholders to concentrate and exert their maximum effort to minimize the spreading rates by maximizing the protection and treatment rates.