Male Circumcision: A Means to Reduce HIV Transmission between Truckers and Female Sex Workers in Kenya

Abstract

Kenya records over 1.5 million cases of HIV-infected people with a prevalence of 4.8% among adultsin 2019, ranking Kenya as the seventh-largest HIV population in the world. A recent study showed that55.9% of Kenyan truckers pay for sex in while 46.6% had a regular partner along their trucking route inaddition to a wife or girlfriend at home. The complexity in the sexual network of Truckers, which can be aconduit for the widespread of HIV, necessitated the need to better understand the dynamics of transmissionof HIV/AIDS between truckers and female sex workers. In this study, a model is formulated for HIV/AIDSdynamics along the Northern corridor highway in Kenya. The reproduction number, disease-free equilibriumand endemic equilibrium points were determined and their stabilities were also determined using the nextgenerationmatrix method. The disease-free equilibrium is stable when R0u < 1, R0c < 1 and R0f < 1 whilethe endemic equilibrium point is stable when R0u > 1, R0c > 1 and R0f > 1. It is found that circumcision canbe used as an intervention to minimize the infection of HIV among truckers and female sex workers.