On the quasi-stationary distribution of the Ross malaria model.

Approximations are derived for the quasi-stationary distribution of the fully stochastic version of the classical Ross malaria model. The approximations are developed in two stages. In the first stage, the Ross process is approximated with a bivariate Markov chain without an absorbing state. The second stage of the approximation uses ideas from perturbation theory to derive explicit expressions that serve as approximations of the joint stationary distribution of the approximating process. Numerical comparisons are made between the approximations and the quasi-stationary distribution.