Mathematical Modeling of Antimicrobial Resistance of Typhoid Fever Incorporating Public Health Education

Abstract

The rise of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) in typhoid fever has led to increased disease severity, prolonged infectious periods, higher treatment costs, and elevated mortality rates, making it a critical public health challenge. In this study, we develop and analyze a deterministic two-strain model to investigate the transmission dynamics of AMR of typhoid fever. The results from analytical analyses indicate that with mutation, typhoid-free equilibrium exists and is Locally Asymptotically Stable (LAS) when both and Further analysis showed that the drug-resistant dominance equilibrium exists and is Globally Asymptotically Stable (GAS) if Furthermore, it was shown that coexistence equilibrium exists if both and Global sensitivity analysis using the Elementary Effect (EE) approach, identifies public health education as the most influential parameter in controlling AMR spread. Numerical simulation shows the impacts of mutation on the persistence of resistant-strain cases. The results further show that, higher mutation rates alone do not certainly lead to increased resistance, but in the absence of adequate education, resistance spreads more quickly. Further results from numerical simulations demonstrate that improving sanitation, treatment, and public health education reduces the reproduction number, with public health education playing a pivotal role. Our findings suggest that integrating public health education into control strategies is essential for effectively mitigating the spread of AMR in typhoid fever.