Modeling and control of malaria dynamics in fish farming regions

TL;DR

This paper develops a nonlinear impulsive differential equation model to analyze how fish farming practices and vegetation management influence malaria transmission in Amazonian fish ponds.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mathematical model incorporating impulsive controls to study malaria dynamics related to fish farming and vegetation cleaning.

Findings

Vegetation cleaning reduces mosquito populations

Conditions for malaria elimination are derived

Model predicts persistence or eradication of malaria based on control strategies

Abstract

In this work we propose a model that represents the relation between fish ponds, the mosquito population and the transmission of malaria. It has been observed that in the Amazonic region of Acre, in the North of Brazil, fish farming is correlated to the transmission of malaria when carried out in artificial ponds that become breeding sites. Evidence has been found indicating that cleaning the vegetation from the edges of the crop tanks helps to control the size of the mosquito population. We use our model to determine the effective contribution of fish farming practices on malaria transmission dynamics. The model consists of a nonlinear system of ordinary differential equations with jumps at the cleaning time, which act as impulsive controls. We study the asymptotic behaviour of the system in function of the intensity and periodicity of the cleaning, and the value of the parameters. In particular, we state sufficient conditions under which the mosquito population is eliminated or persists, and under which the malaria is eliminated or becomes endemic. We prove our conditions by applying results for cooperative systems with concave nonlinearities.