Speaker
Description
Waterborne diseases continue to pose a major global public health concern, particularly in areas lacking adequate water infrastructure. During outbreaks, changes in human behavior often play a crucial—sometimes dominant—role in shaping disease transmission. We introduce a reaction–diffusion model that accounts for varying patterns of human mobility and behavioral responses within a spatially heterogeneous environment to better understand the disease dynamics and control strategies. The model incorporates both direct and indirect transmission pathways, and assumes a cubic growth for bacterial intrinsic dynamics to highlight more interesting and complicated dynamics. The existence and uniqueness of biologically meaningful equilibria is investigated, along with their stability analysis. The effects of diffusion on the stability of the equilibria are also considered. Numerical simulations are used to explore how environmental heterogeneity, mobility, and behavioral adaptation influence the final epidemic size and, consequently, the spread of the disease.
