Assessing the impact of optimized prevention strategies for mother-to-child HIV transmission dynamics in Kenya: a mathematical modeling study
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Date
2025-04-19
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
medRxiv
Abstract
HIV can be transmitted from a HIV infected mother to her child during pregnancy,
delivery, or breastfeeding. According to NSDCC 2023, Kenya has estimated PMTCT
coverage of 89.56% and PMTCT transmission rate of 8.6%. Even though there has been
strides to address PMTCT, there is need to gear up approaches in addressing MTCT in
order to significantly advance elimination. This research formulates a mathematical
model to represent the dynamics of MTCT. Equilibrium points of the model are
computed and the stability of HIV-free point is investigated. The numerical results
show that a 50% decrease in maternal HIV transmission lowers infant infection rates by
about 17.7%, whereas the same reduction in infant transmission decreases infections by
nearly 39%, highlighting the greater sensitivity of infant transmission rates to direct
interventions. While combination of strategies achieves the highest HIV minimization
rates of up to 99.89% on infants, ART adherence alone significantly reduces
transmission, particularly on infants (91.42%) while use of post-exposure prophylaxis
(PEP) shows limited effectiveness when used alone(39.65%), suggesting that it should be
complemented with other strategies for optimal impact. These findings emphasize the
critical need for integrated interventions, where combining multiple prevention methods
yields the best outcomes in reducing HIV infections on infants and moving closer to the
elimination of pediatric HIV. These findings align with global recommendations from
World Health Organization (WHO). This research can be used by the ministry of health
to inform policy as well as recreated for other maternal infections.
Description
Keywords
PMTCT, PEP, ART, Optimized.