MODELING THE EFFECTS OF SCHISTOSOMIASIS ON THE TRANSMISSION DYNAMICS OF HIV/AIDS

Abstract

A schistosomiasis and HIV/AIDS co-infection model is presented as a system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations. Qualitative analysis (properties) of the model are presented. The disease-free equilibrium is shown to be locally asymptotically stable when the associated epidemic threshold known as the basic reproduction number for the model is less than unity. The Centre Manifold theory is used to show that the schistosomiasis only and HIV/AIDS only endemic equilibria are locally asymptotically stable when the associated reproduction numbers are greater than unity. The model is numerically analyzed to assess the effects of schistosomiasis on the dynamics of HIV/AIDS. Analysis of the reproduction numbers and numerical simulations show that an increase of schistosomiasis cases result in an increase of HIV/AIDS cases, suggesting that schistosomiasis control have a positive impact in controlling the transmission dynamics of HIV/AIDS.