Chagas Disease Modeling

Student: David Mock
Category: Individual Project

Chagas disease is a significant health problem in rural South and Central America, where about 8 to 11 million people are currently infected with an acute or chronic form of the disease. It is a vector-borne disease caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi which is usually transmitted to humans through the bites of insect vectors from several species of “kissing bugs” or triatomines.

The introduction of a comprehensive Chagas disease model that considers the major known transmission routes and insecticide spraying within endemic countries will allow for the determination of a theoretical insecticide spraying constant. Conditions for the existence and uniqueness of disease-free and endemic equilibria are established for the model. These conditions describe how insecticide spraying will impact the spread of Chagas disease within the modeling system. The influence of insecticide spraying on the dynamics of the model is theoretically and numerically investigated.