Individual-based simulation model of the transmission of STIs along a dynamic sexual network

Abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa has a very high HIV prevalence compared to the rest of the world. There has been a debate about the role that concurrent partnerships (more than one sexual partnership at the same time) might play in the spread of HIV. We discuss an existing deterministic model describing a partnership network with individuals that are involved in a dynamically varying number of simultaneous partnerships, and the spread of sexually transmitted infections on top of this network. In order to close the system of equations describing the deterministic model a so-called ‘mean field at distance one’ assumption is made. We compare the deterministic model with a simulation model for which this assumption is not needed. We have done this by writing a computer code that simulates the network and the transmission of infections in the network.