| Human rabies is one of the major public health problems
in China. In the last 20 years or so, rural communities and areas in
Mainland China invaded by rabies are gradually and significantly
enlarged. Dogs are the main infection source, which contribute
85%-95% of human cases in China. Some provinces such as Shaanxi and
Shanxi, used to be rabies free, have increasing numbers of human
infections cases now. Recent phylogeographical analyses of rabies
virus clades indicate that the human rabies cases in different and
geographically unconnected provinces in China are epidemiologically
related. In order to investigate how the movement of dogs changes
the geographically inter-provincial spread of rabies in Mainland
China, we propose a multi-patch model for the transmission dynamics
of rabies between dogs and humans, in which each province is
regarded as a patch. In each patch the submodel consists of
susceptible, exposed, infectious, and vaccinated subpopulations of
both dogs and humans and describes the spread of rabies among dogs
and from infectious dogs to humans. The existence of the
disease-free equilibrium and the basic reproduction number will be
discussed and calculated, and how the moving rates of dogs between
patches affect the basic reproduction number will be studied. To
investigate the rabies virus clades lineages observed in the
phylogeographical analyses, the two-patch model will be used to
simulate the human rabies data to study the inter-provincial spread
of rabies between Guangxi and Guizhou, Fujian and Hebei and Sichuan
and Guizhou, respectively. In order to reduce and prevent
geographical spread of rabies in China, our results suggest that the
management of dog market and trade need to be regulated and
transportation of dogs need to be better monitored and under
constant surveillance. |