Department of Mathematics, Howard University, Washington, DC 20059, USA.
Department of Mathematics, Augusta University, Augusta, GA 30912, USA.
Math Biosci Eng. 2021 Sep 27;18(6):8374-8391. doi: 10.3934/mbe.2021415.
The Far North Region of Cameroon, a high risk cholera endemic region, has been experiencing serious and recurrent cholera outbreaks in recent years. Cholera outbreaks in this region are associated with cultural practices (traditional and religious beliefs). In this paper, we introduce a mathematical model of the influence of cultural practices on the dynamics of cholera in the Far North Region. Our model is an SEIR type model with a pathogen class and multiple susceptible classes based on traditional and religious beliefs. Using daily reported cholera cases from three health districts (Kaélé, Kar Hay and Moutourwa) in the Far North Region from June 25, 2019 to August 16, 2019, we estimate parameter values of our model and use Akaike information criterion (AIC) to demonstrate that our model gives a good fit for our data on cholera cases. We use sensitivity analysis to study the impact of each model parameter on the threshold parameter (control reproduction number), R, and the number of model predicted cholera cases. Finally, we investigate the effect of cultural practices on the number of cholera cases in the region.
喀麦隆北部地区是一个霍乱高发疫区，近年来一直发生严重和反复的霍乱疫情。该地区的霍乱疫情与文化习俗（传统和宗教信仰）有关。在本文中，我们引入了一个数学模型，用于研究文化习俗对喀麦隆北部地区霍乱动态的影响。我们的模型是一个 SEIR 型模型，基于传统和宗教信仰，有一个病原体类和多个易感类。我们使用了 2019 年 6 月 25 日至 2019 年 8 月 16 日来自喀麦隆北部三个卫生区（卡莱、卡雷和穆图瓦拉）的每日报告的霍乱病例，估计了我们模型的参数值，并使用赤池信息量准则（AIC）来证明我们的模型对霍乱病例数据的拟合度较好。我们使用敏感性分析来研究每个模型参数对阈值参数（控制繁殖数）R 和模型预测霍乱病例数的影响。最后，我们研究了文化习俗对该地区霍乱病例数的影响。
