Mathematical Modelling of Bacterial Meningitis Transmission Dynamics with Control Measures

Vaccination and treatment are the most efective ways of controlling the transmission of most infectious diseases. While vaccination helps susceptible individuals to build either a long-term immunity or short-term immunity, treatment reduces the number of disease-induced deaths and the number of infectious individuals in a community/nation. In this paper, a nonlinear deterministic model with time-dependent controls has been proposed to describe the dynamics of bacterial meningitis in a population.Te model is shown to exhibit a unique globally asymptotically stable disease-free equilibrium E0, when the efective reproduction number RVT ≤ 1, and a globally asymptotically stable endemic equilibrium E1, when RVT > 1; and it exhibits a transcritical bifurcation at RVT = 1. Carriers have been shown (by Tornado plot) to have a higher chance of spreading the infection than those with clinical symptoms who will sometimes be bound to bed during the acute phase of the infection. In order to fnd the best strategy for minimizing the number of carriers and ill individuals and the cost of control implementation, an optimal control problem is set up by defning a Lagrangian function to be minimized subject to the proposed model. Numerical simulation of the optimal problem demonstrates that the best strategy to control bacterial meningitis is to combine vaccination with other interventions (such as treatment and public health education). Additionally, this research suggests that stakeholders should press hard for the production of existing/new vaccines and antibiotics and their disbursement to areas that are most afected by bacterial meningitis, especially Sub-Saharan Africa; furthermore, individuals who live in communities where the environment is relatively warm (hot/moisture) are advised to go for vaccination against bacterial meningitis.