Bifurcations in an epidemic model with constant removal rate of the infectives

An epidemic model with a constant removal rate of infective individuals is proposed to understand the effect of limited resources for treatment of infectives on the disease spread. It is found that it is unnecessary to take such a large treatment capacity that endemic equilibria disappear to eradicate the disease. It is shown that the outcome of disease spread may depend on the position of the initial states for certain range of parameters. It is also shown that the model undergoes a sequence of bifurcations including saddle-node bifurcation, subcritical Hopf bifurcation, and homoclinic bifurcation. (C) 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.