The Dynamics of Multi-Drug Resistant Organisms: Modeling Nosocomial Infection Control Measures

It has long been a challenge to try and understand how nosocomial infections develops in order to find the most efficient methods to combat it. Though drugs do exist to treat them, they are known to be highly resistant and have proven to be a reoccurring problem in hospitals, posing an increasing medical burden. Infection control measures have been implemented in order to reduce their impact and spread with various degrees of completeness and efficiency.

A multi-drug resistant ODE model, featuring three types of infection status and two groupings of patient history classes, is created to model the transmission dynamics of Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcus and Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus. Analysis of the model is supported with numerical simulations. It is shown that infection control procedures, including the identication of high-risk patient groupings, have a strong effect on the transmission dynamics.