Modelling the trends of inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation for methamphetamine in the Western Cape province of South Africa

BACKGROUND: Dependence on methamphetamine remains one of the major health and social problem in the Western Cape province of South Africa. We consider a mathematical model that takes into account two forms of rehabilitation, namely; inpatient and outpatient. We examine the trends of these two types of rehabilitation. We also seek to investigate the global dynamics of the developed methamphetamine epidemic model. METHODS: The model is designed by likening the initiation process to an infection that spreads in a community through interactions between methamphetamine users and non-users. We make use of Lyapunov functions obtained from a suitable combination of common quadratic and Volterra-type functions to establish the global stability of the methamphetamine-persistent steady state. The least squares curve fit routine (lsqcurvefit) in Matlab with optimization is used to estimate the parameter values. RESULTS: The model analysis shows that the model has two equilibria, the methamphetamine free equilibrium and the methamphetamine persistent equilibrium, that are both globally stable when the threshold [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] , respectively. Upon fitting the model to data on drug users under rehabilitation, parameter values that give the best fit were obtained. The projections carried out the long term trends of these forms of rehabilitation. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that inpatient rehabilitation programs have an increased potential of enhancing the chances of recovery for methamphetamine addicts.