Mathematical model and intervention strategies for mitigating tuberculosis in the Philippines

Abstract

Tuberculosis (TB) is the sixth leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the Philippines. Although significant progress has been made in the detection and cure of TB under the Directly Observed Treatment Short Course, battling against the disease is still a burdensome task. It demands a concerted effort for specific and effective interventions. In this work, a mathematical TB model fitted to the Philippine data is developed to understand its transmission dynamics. Different control strategies such as distancing, latent case finding, case holding, active case finding controls, and combinations thereof are investigated within the framework of optimal control theory. This study proposes optimal control strategies for reducing the number of high-risk latent and infectious TB patients with minimum intervention implementation costs. Results suggest that distancing control is the most efficient control strategy when a single intervention is utilized. However, full scale employment of the distancing control measure is a daunting task. This burden can be circumvented by the combination of other control interventions. Our noble finding in this study is that enhancing active case finding control instead of case holding control together with distancing and latent case finding control is shown to have significant potential for curtailing the spread of TB in the Philippines.

Keywords: Epidemic model; Optimal control theory; Parameter estimation; Tuberculosis.