Optimal control analysis of Taenia saginata bovine cysticercosis and human taeniasis

Bovine cysticercosis and human taeniasis are neglected food-borne diseases that pose challenge to food safety, human health and livelihood of rural livestock farmers. In this paper, we have formulated and analyzed a deterministic model for transmission dynamics and control of taeniasis and cysticercosis in humans and cattle respectively. The analysis shows that both the disease free equilibrium (DFE) and endemic equilibrium (EE) exist. To study the dynamics of the diseases, we derived the basic reproduction number R₀ by next generation matrix method which shows whether the diseases die or persist in humans and cattle. The diseases clear if R₀<1 and persist when R₀>1. The normalized forward sensitivity index is used to derive sensitive indices of model parameters. Sensitivity analysis results indicate that human's and cattle's recruitment rates, infection rate of cattle from contaminated environment, probability of humans to acquire taeniasis due to consumption of infected meat, defecation rate of humans with taeniasis and the consumption rate of raw or undercooked infected meat are the most positive sensitive parameters whereas the natural death rates for humans, cattle, Taenia saginata eggs and the proportion of unconsumed infected meat are the most negative sensitive parameters in diseases’ transmission. These results suggest that control measures such as improving meat cooking, meat inspection and treatment of infected humans will be effective for controlling taeniasis and cysticercosis in humans and cattle respectively. The optimal control theory is applied by considering three time dependent controls which are improved meat cooking, vaccination of cattle, and treatment of humans with taeniasis when they are implemented in combination. The Pontryagin's maximum principle is adopted to find the necessary conditions for existence of the optimal controls. The Runge Kutta order four forward-backward sweep method is implemented in Matlab to solve the optimal control problem. The results indicate that a strategy which focuses on improving meat cooking and treatment of humans with taeniasis is the optimal strategy for diseases’ control.