A mathematical model of how non-adherence to HIV management guidelines for infected newborns contribute to the spread of HIV/AIDS

Abstract

Each year, millions of children are born with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a quarter of whom adhere poorly to HIV treatment guidelines. This study uses a simple mathematical model to investigate the basic dynamic processes by which infected newborns under treatment progress to AIDS and contribute to its spread. The results indicate that the disease-free steady state is unstable, raising substantial concern from the public health point of view. The results show that the fraction of newborns who fail to adhere to the HIV management guidelines (30%) significantly contributes to the spread of HIV. However, the rate of HIV-positive newborns under treatment therapy is significant. This study agrees that only a small proportion of HIV-positive newborns adhere to management guidelines. These analyses should yield significant knowledge to advance our understanding of HIV infection in the early stages of life.

Keywords:

• HIV diseases
• reproduction number
• sensitivity analysis
• transmission mathematical modeling
• treatment therapy

Disclosure statement

All authors declared that no competing interests exist.

Ethical approval

Ethical approval is not applicable because we obtained our data from the Ministry of Health, Malaysia. This is secondary data and can be found at http://www.moh.gov.my/moh/resources/auto%20download%20images/587da175a877f.pdf at page 116. We declare that this manuscript is original, has not been submitted elsewhere before, and is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere. All authors have given consent for the publication of this manuscript in the Journal of HIV/AIDS & Social Services.

Author contributions

O.O.A. conceived and designed the experiments and performed the experiments. O.O.A., M.P.K., and N.A.I. analyzed the data and contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools. O.O.A., and M.P.K. wrote the paper. O.O.A., M.P.K., and G.K.L. formatted the manuscript according to journal requirements.

Data availability statement

Data supporting the results presented in this manuscript is available as stated above.

Additional information

Funding

The research work was self-sponsored by the authors.