Improving Tuberculosis Control: Assessing the Value of Medical Masks and Case Detection – A Multi-Country Study with Cost-Effectiveness Analysis

Abstract

AbstractTuberculosis (TB) remains a significant global health concern, necessitating effective control strategies. This paper presents a mathematical model to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of medical mask usage and case detection in TB control. The model is constructed as a system of ordinary differential equations and incorporates crucial aspects of TB dynamics, including slow-fast progression, medical mask utilization, case detection, treatment interventions, and differentiation between symptomatic and asymptomatic cases. A key objective of TB control is to ensure that the reproduction number, ℛc, remains below unity to achieve TB elimination or persistence if ℛcexceeds one. Our mathematical analysis reveals the presence of a transcritical bifurcation when the ℛc= 1 signifies a critical juncture in TB control strategies. These results confirm that the effectiveness of case detection in diminishing the endemic population of symptomatic individuals within a TB-endemic equilibrium depends on exceeding a critical threshold value. Furthermore, our model is calibrated using TB yearly case incidence data per 100,000 population from Indonesia, India, Lesotho, and Angola, and we employ the Bootstrap Resampling Residual Approach to assess the uncertainty inherent in our parameter estimates and provide a comprehensive distribution of parameter values. Despite a declining trend in new incidence, these four countries exhibit a reproduction number greater than one, indicating persistent TB cases in the presence of ongoing TB control programs. We employ the Partial Rank Correlation Coefficient (PRCC) in conjunction with the Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS) method to conduct global sensitivity analysis of theℛcparameter for each fitted parameter in every country. We find that the medical mask use is more sensitive to reduce ℛccompared to the case detection implementation. To further gain insight into the necessary control strategy, we formulated an optimal control and studied the cost-effectiveness analysis of our model to investigate the impact of case detection and medical mask use as control measures in TB spread. Cost-effectiveness analysis demonstrates that combining these interventions emerges as the most cost-effective strategy for TB control. Our findings highlight the critical importance of medical masks and their efficacy coupled with case detection in shaping TB control dynamics, elucidating the primary parameter of concern for managing the control reproduction number. We envisage our findings to have implications and be vital for TB control if implemented by policymakers and healthcare practitioners involved in TB control efforts.