Influence of human behavior on cholera dynamics

TLDR

The study investigates how human behavior influences cholera infection dynamics. The authors model cholera transmission with an ODE incorporating behavior‑dependent contact rates, analyze its dynamics and basic reproduction number, then extend to a reaction–convection–diffusion PDE to study traveling‑wave spreading speeds and threshold dynamics. Human behavior reduces endemic and epidemic levels, slows cholera spreading speeds, and lowers the basic reproduction number, thereby decreasing infection risk.

Abstract

This paper is devoted to studying the impact of human behavior on cholera infection. We start with a cholera ordinary differential equation (ODE) model that incorporates human behavior via modeling disease prevalence dependent contact rates for direct and indirect transmissions and infectious host shedding. Local and global dynamics of the model are analyzed with respect to the basic reproduction number. We then extend the ODE model to a reaction–convection–diffusion partial differential equation (PDE) model that accounts for the movement of both human hosts and bacteria. Particularly, we investigate the cholera spreading speed by analyzing the traveling wave solutions of the PDE model, and disease threshold dynamics by numerically evaluating the basic reproduction number of the PDE model. Our results show that human behavior can reduce (a) the endemic and epidemic levels, (b) cholera spreading speeds and (c) the risk of infection (characterized by the basic reproduction number).