OPTIMAL CONTROL ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECT OF TREATMENT, ISOLATION AND VACCINATION ON HEPATITIS B VIRUS

Hepatitis B infection is a serious health issue and a major cause of deaths worldwide. This infection can be overcome by adopting proper treatment and control strategies. In this paper, we develop and use a mathematical model to explore the effect of treatment on the dynamics of hepatitis B infection. First, we formulate and use a model without control variables to calculate the basic reproduction number and to investigate basic properties of the model such as the existence and stability of equilibria. In the absence of control measures, we prove that the disease free equilibrium is locally asymptotically stable when the basic reproduction number is less than unity. Also, using persistent theorem, it is shown that the infection is uniformly persistent, whenever the basic reproduction number is greater than unity. Using optimal control theory, we incorporate into the model three time-dependent control variables and investigate the conditions required to curtail the spread of the disease. Finally, to illustrate the effectiveness of each of the control strategies on disease control and eradication, we perform numerical simulations. Based on the numerical results, we found that the first two strategies (treatment and isolation strategy) and (vaccination and isolation strategy) are not very effective as a long term control or eradication strategy for HBV. Hence, we recommend that in order to effectively control the disease, all the control measures (isolation, vaccination and treatment) must be implemented at the same time.