Dynamics of a partially degenerate reaction-diffusion cholera model with horizontal transmission and phage-bacteria interaction

Abstract

We propose a cholera model with coupled reaction-diffusion equations and ordinary differential equations for discussing the effects of spatial heterogeneity, horizontal transmission, environmental viruses and phages on the spread of vibrio cholerae. We establish the well-posedness of this model which includes the existence of unique global positive solution, asymptotic smoothness of semiflow, and existence of a global attractor. The basic reproduction number R0 is obtained to describe the persistence and extinction of the disease. That is, the disease-free steady state is globally asymptotically stable for R0≤1, while it is unstable for R0>1. And, the disease is persistence and the model has the phage-free and phage-present endemic steady states in this case. Further, the global asymptotic stability of phage-free and phage-present endemic steady states are discussed for spatially homogeneous model. Finally, some numerical examples are displayed in order to illustrate the main theoretical results and our opening questions.