MODELING AND ANALYSIS OF HIV AND HEPATITIS C CO-INFECTIONS

Infection with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) is the most common coinfection in people with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and hepatitis C is categorized as an HIV-related illness. The study of the joint dynamics of HIV and HCV present formidable mathematical challenges in spite the fact that they share similar routes of transmission. A deterministic model for the co-interaction of HCV and HIV in a community is presented and rigorously analyzed. The disease-free equilibrium is shown to be locally asymptotically stable when the associated epidemic threshold known as the basic reproduction number for the model is less than the unity. The Centre Manifold theory is used to show that the HCV only and HIV/AIDS only endemic equilibria are locally asymptotically stable when their associated reproduction numbers are greater than the unity. We compute two coexistence thresholds for the stability of boundary equilibria. Numerical results are presented to validate analytical results.