A Mathematical Model for Co-infection Dynamics of Pneumocystis Pneumonia and HIV/AIDS with Treatment

Abstract

The control of opportunistic infections among HIV infected individuals should be one of the major public health concerns in reducing mortality rate of individuals living with HIV/AIDS. In this study a deterministic co-infection mathematical model is employed to provide a quantification of treatment at each contagious stage against Pneumocystis Pneumonia (PCP) among HIV infected individuals on ART. The disease-free equilibrium for the HIV/AIDS sub model, PCP sub model and the co-infection model are shown to be locally asymptotically stable when their associated disease threshold parameter is less than a unity. By use of suitable Lyapunov functions, the endemic equilibrium corresponding to HIV/AIDS and PCP sub models are globally asymptotically stable whenever $\mathcal{R}_{0H}>1$ and $\mathcal{R}_{0P}>1$ respectively. The sensitivity analysis results implicate that the effective contact rates are the main mechanisms fueling the proliferation of the two diseases and on the other hand treatment efforts play an important role in reducing the incidence. Numerical simulations show that treatment of PCP at all contagious stages reduces its burden on HIV/AIDS patients and dual treatment of the co-infected individuals significantly reduces the burden of the co-infection.