A Game-Theoretic Model of Cholera with Optimal Personal Protection Strategies

Abstract

Cholera is an acute gastro-intestinal infection that affects millions of people throughout the world each year, primarily but not exclusively in developing countries. Because of its public health ramifications, considerable mathematical attention has been paid to the disease. Here we consider one neglected aspect of combating cholera: personal participation in anti-cholera interventions. We construct a game-theoretic model of cholera in which individuals choose whether to participate in either vaccination or clean water consumption programs under assumed costs. We find that relying upon individual compliance significantly lowers the incidence of the disease as long as the cost of intervention is sufficiently low, but does not eliminate it. The relative costs of the measures determined whether a population preferentially adopts a single preventative measure or employs the measure with the strongest early adoption.

A game-theoretic model of Monkeypox to assess vaccination strategies

“…The mathematical model for such a measure would become more complex. The main idea would follow the spirit of Kobe et al (2018) that investigated a situation for cholera prevention where individuals could either vaccinate or avoid drinking potentially contaminated water.…”

“…The model is a predictive tool in populations for extracting an optimum decision-making strategy (Chang et al, 2020). Game theory has been applied to protection strategies to control diseases such as smallpox (Bauch, Galvani & Earn, 2003), toxoplasmosis (Sykes & Rychtář, 2015), cholera (Kobe et al, 2018), measles (Shim et al, 2012), rubella (Shim, Kochin & Galvani, 2009), influenza (Galvani, Reluga & Chapman, 2007), African sleeping sickness (Crawford et al, 2015), malaria (Orwa, Mbogo & Luboobi, 2018;Broom, Rychtář & Spears-Gill, 2016), (Zika Padmanabhan, Seshaiyer & Castillo-Chavez, 2017;Banuelos et al, 2019) (Polio Cheng et al, 2020, Ebola (Brettin et al, 2018), chikungunya (SRM Klein, AO Foster, DA Feagins, JT Rowell, IV Erovenko, 2019, unpublished data), meningitis (A Martinez, J Machado, E Sanchez, I Erovenko, 2019, unpublished data), typhoid (C Acosta-Alonzo, IV Erovenko, A Lancaster, H Oh, J Rychtář, D Taylor, 2020, unpublished data), Hepatitis C (Scheckelhoff, Ejaz & Erovenko, 2019) and Hepatitis B (Chouhan et al, in press) among others. In this paper, we apply a similar approach to MPX to investigate a scenario in which individuals have the option of vaccinating to reduce the chance of contracting the virus.…”

Optimal strategies for vaccination and social distancing in a game-theoretic epidemiologic model

“…Regardless, the majority of these game-theoretic studies on disease modeling have considered a single strategy and have not facilitated multiple intervention options. One notable exception is the study by Kobe et al, where two options for protection strategies for cholera, namely vaccination and the use of clean water, were considered ( Kobe et al, 2018 ). In our study, we aimed to derive individually optimal protection strategies in the event of a disease outbreak under the assumption that individuals have the options of being vaccinated or practicing social distancing.…”

Optimal voluntary and mandatory insect repellent usage and emigration strategies to control the chikungunya outbreak on Reunion Island

“…As the likelihood of contracting the disease is dependent upon the behavior of others within the at-risk population, the resulting strategic interactions between individuals can be modeled using game theory. Game-theoretic frameworks have been adopted to studying optimal individual vaccination strategies for smallpox (Bauch, Galvani & Earn, 2003), influenza (Galvani, Reluga & Chapman, 2007;Shim et al, 2012a), rubella (Shim, Kochin & Galvani, 2009), measles (Shim et al, 2012b), toxoplasmosis (Sykes & Rychtář, 2015), Ebola (Brettin et al, 2018), cholera (Kobe et al, 2018), meningitis (A Martinez, J Machado, E Sanchez, I Erovenko, 2019, unpublished data), hepatitis B (Chouhan et al, 2020), monkeypox (Bankuru et al, 2020), poliomyelitis (Cheng et al, 2020), and typhoid fever (Acosta-Alonzo et al, 2020). It has also been applied to other personal protective measures such as insecticide-treated cattle (Crawford et al, 2015), mosquito repellent (Dorsett et al, 2016), insecticide-treated bed nets (Broom, Rychtář & Spears-Gill, 2016), clean water (Kobe et al, 2018), and clean injecting equipment (K Scheckelhoff, A Ejaz, I Erovenko, 2019, unpublished data).…”