Analysis of a waterborne disease model with socioeconomic classes

Waterborne diseases such as cholera continue to pose serious public health problems in the world today. Transmission parameters can vary greatly with socioeconomic class (SEC) and the availability of clean water. We formulate a multi-patch waterborne disease model such that each patch represents a particular SEC with its own water source, allowing individuals to move between SECs. For a 2-SEC model, we investigate the conditions under which each SEC is responsible for driving a cholera outbreak. We determine the effect of SECs on disease transmission dynamics by comparing the basic reproduction number of the 2-SEC model to that of a homogeneous model that does not take SECs into account. We conclude by extending several results of the 2-SEC model to an n-SEC model.