Mathematical modeling of the influence of cultural practices on cholera infections in Cameroon

The Far North Region of Cameroon, a high risk cholera endemic region, has been experiencing serious and recurrent cholera outbreaks in recent years. Cholera outbreaks in this region are associated with cultural practices (traditional and religious beliefs). In this paper, we introduce a mathematical model of the influence of cultural practices on the dynamics of cholera in the Far North Region. Our model is an SEIR type model with a pathogen class and multiple susceptible classes based on traditional and religious beliefs. Using daily reported cholera cases from three health districts (Kaélé, Kar Hay and Moutourwa) in the Far North Region from June 25, 2019 to August 16, 2019, we estimate parameter values of our model and use Akaike information criterion (AIC) to demonstrate that our model gives a good fit for our data on cholera cases. We use sensitivity analysis to study the impact of each model parameter on the threshold parameter (control reproduction number), R_c, and the number of model predicted cholera cases. Finally, we investigate the effect of cultural practices on the number of cholera cases in the region.