Modeling the Dynamics of Drug Spreading in China.

Haoxiang Tang,Xiangyu Yan,Zuhong Lu,Zhongwei Jia,Mingtao Li

doi:10.3390/ijerph18010288

Abstract

Drug abuse remains one of the major public health issues at the global level. In this article, we propose a drug epidemic model with a complete addiction–rehabilitation–recovery process, which allows the initiation of new users under the influence of drug addicts undergoing treatment and hidden drug addicts. We first conduct qualitative analyses of the dynamical behaviors of the model, including the existence and positivity of the solutions, the basic reproduction number, global asymptotic stabilities of both the drug-free and the drug-persistent equilibria, as well as sensitivity analysis. Then we use the model to predict the drug epidemic in China during 2020–2030. Finally, we numerically simulate the potential impact of intervention strategies on different drug users. The results show that the drug epidemic will decrease significantly during 2020−2030, and the most effective intervention strategy to eliminate drug epidemics is to strengthen the investigation and rehabilitation admission of hidden drug users.

Highlights

The phenomenon of drug abuse, which involves the consumption of illicit drugs and nonmedical use of prescription drugs, has become one of the global health issues threatening the safety and sustainability of human society in the 21st century
Despite the delightful tendency of decrease generated by model simulation in the Despite the delightful tendency of decrease generated by model simulation in the previous section, it is still the objective of policy makers and public health workers to previous section, it is still the objective of policy makers and public health workers to further shrink the scale of drug epidemic
School-based anti-drug education or preventive propaganda through publicity has been in China in the in past and proved itself itself as an as efmedia publicity hasimplemented been implemented in China thedecades past decades and proved fective tool against drugdrug epidemic

Summary

Introduction

The phenomenon of drug abuse, which involves the consumption of illicit drugs and nonmedical use of prescription drugs, has become one of the global health issues threatening the safety and sustainability of human society in the 21st century. World Drug Report released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), approximately 271 million people, which constituted 5.5% of the global population aged 15−64, had used drugs in 2016 [1]. The world has witnessed a 30% increase in the drug-using population ever since 2009 [1,2]. In terms of drug type, opioids remained the most lethal group, which resulted in around 66% of overdose-related deaths worldwide in 2017 [1]. Some 35 million people suffered from drug use disorders and required treatment service around the world, and the death toll attributed to drug use totaled 585,000 in 2017 [1]

Results

Discussion

Conclusion