A mathematical model for human papillomavirus and its impact on cervical cancer in India

Cervical cancer is one of the most common cancers among women globally, with more than three quarters of its global burden occurring in developing countries and one of the most common cancer among Indian women. Cervical cancer cases (more than 95%) are linked to infection with high-risk human papillomaviruses (HPV). HPV is mostly transmitted through sexual contact, and majority become infected with HPV shortly after sexual activity begins. This paper develops a mathematical model for HPV transmission and its impact on cervical cancer. The basic properties of the system are discussed in detail. Using the next-generation matrix method, we obtain the basic reproduction number and prove that the disease-free and endemic equilibrium are globally asymptotically stable under certain conditions. Numerical solutions of the proposed model are carried out using the fourth-order Runge-Kutta method to demonstrate our theoretical results.The developed model is applied to reported data of women HPV transmission from 2016 to 2020 obtained from the HPV Information center and Indian Council of Medical Research. From the data, we estimate parameter values and identify the key parameters that influence transmission via sensitivity analysis for this model. The simulation results match the HPV epidemic data in India approximately.