Avian-human influenza epidemic model with diffusion

A diffusive epidemic model is investigated. This model describes the transmission of avian influenza among birds and humans. The behavior of positive solutions to a reaction-diffusion system with homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions are investigated. Sufficient conditions for the local and global asymptotical stability are given by spectral analysis and by using Lyapunov functional. Our result shows that the disease-free equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable, if the contact rate for the susceptible birds and the contact rate for the susceptible humans are small. It suggests that the best policy to prevent the occurrence of a pandemic is not only to exterminate the infected birds with avian influenza but also to reduce the contact rate for susceptible humans with the individuals infected with mutant avian influenza. Numerical simulations are presented to illustrate the main results. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.