An improved optimistic three-stage model for the spread of HIV amongst injecting intravenous drug users (Q2380911)

The authors investigate an improved model for the spread of HIV/AIDS amongst sharing IDUs. The infected needles and infected addicts are each split into three groups representing the three levels of differential infectivity amongst addicts. The key difference between this and previous work is that infected needles did not remain infected indefinitely. Instead they lost infectivity at rate depending on their infectious class. The authors find that there is a key threshold parameter, the basic reproduction number \(R_0\). Next the authors give some analytical equilibrium, local and global stability results. If \(R_0 \leq 1\) then the disease will always die out. For \(R_0 > 1\) there is the disease-free equilibrium (DFE) and a unique endemic equilibrium. The DFE is unstable. The authors next discuss a more realistic version of the model, relaxing the assumption that the number of addicts remains constant and obtain some results for this model. The subsequent section gives simulations for both models confirming that if \(R_0 \leq 1\) then the disease will die out and if \(R_0 > 1\) then if it is initially present the disease will tend to the unique endemic equilibrium. The simulation results are compared with the original model with no loss of HIV infectivity. Next the implications of these results for control strategies are considered. A brief summary concludes the paper.