A Multi-Scale Model for Cholera Outbreaks

Cholera, caused by the pathogenic Vibrio cholerae bacteria, remains a severe public health threat. Although lot of emphasis has been placed on population-level spread disease, infection itself starts within body. As such, we formulated multi-scale model that explicitly connects within-host and between-host dynamics disease. To dynamics, assigned each susceptible individual with pathogen load increases through uptake contaminated food water (booster event). We introduced minimal maximal times when booster events happen defined time since last event. then scaled to population where structured using two variables (pathogen analyzed load’s invariant distribution utilized results scale assumptions reduce dimension model. The resulting is an SIR whose incidence function terms derived from finally conducted numerical simulations investigate long-term behavior revealed parameter regions either no cholera cases happen, present at low prevalence, full-blown epidemic takes off.