Transmission dynamics of brucellosis in Jilin province, China: Effects of different control measures

Abstract

Brucellosis is a zoonotic disease, which has gave rise to massive financial burden to animal husbandry in China. Jilin province is one of the worst-hit areas of brucellosis and thus understanding the transmission mechanism of brucellosis is of great significance for successful containment. In this paper, we leverage a discrete-time human-sheep coupled model constructed by employing backward Euler method to investigate the effects of different control measures on the brucellosis transmission in Jilin province. Firstly, we introduce the basic reproduction number R0 which completely determines the threshold dynamics. Secondly, the parameters values of the transmission dynamics are estimated based on the confirmed human brucellosis cases and the trend of newly infected human brucellosis cases are simulated for the next few years in Jilin province, and the simulated results elucidate that brucellosis will not disappear in a short time. Lastly, we reveal that enlarging the frequency and effectiveness of disinfection, the efficacy of propaganda and education, and the elimination rate can reduce the prevalent time and final scale of brucellosis in Jilin Province. Specifically speaking, when the disinfection frequency τ=0.0666 and the effective disinfection rate δ=0.3, the incidence of brucellosis can be dropped to less than 1 per 100,000 eleven years ahead of baseline model. When the effectiveness of propaganda and education is 60%, the control target will be attained eight years in advance. When the elimination rate μ increases by 20%, brucellosis can reach the control target ten years ahead. However, when the new born number of sheep exceeds 12075 or the elimination rate is below 0.00234, the brucellosis will outbreak promptly. Overall, the obtained results may be conductive to suppress the spread of brucellosis.