New survey data indicate that injection drug users (IDU) in Victoria, BC who
share syringes do so with a single person. These partnerships pose an obvious health
risk to IDU, as blood borne illnesses are transmitted through the sharing of injection
equipment. Here we formulate an ordinary di erential equation (ODE) model of pair
formation and separation. Susceptible-infectious (SI) disease dynamics are built into
this model so as to describe the syringe-mediated transmission of human immune
de ciency virus (HIV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) among IDU. We utilize a novel
parameter estimation approach, and t the distribution of partnership durations observed
in Victoria. The basic reproduction number is derived, and its qualitative
behavior explored with both analytical and numerical techniques.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/2015 |
| Date | 22 December 2009 |
| Creators | Lindquist, Jennifer Frances |
| Contributors | Ma, Junling |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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