Emergence of drug-resistant through behavioural interactions: Game theoretic approach

Emergence of antibiotic drug resistance has raised great concerns for public health, especially in low and lower middle income country. Many studies indicate the emergence and high burden of drug residence is a complex dynamics influenced by several socioeconomic factors like poverty, health expenses, and self-medication. Self-medication through Over-the-counter (OTC) drug sales plays a major role in ever-increasing antibiotic consumption, and it is is more ubiquitous in more economically destitute society. To explore this, we developed a game-theoretic model of human choices in self-medication integrating economic growth in population, and disease transmission process. We show that combined impact of economy, infections and behaviour yield resistance as a self-reinforcing cycle in drug resistance. Our model illustrates that individuals' perceived risk plays an important role in disease dynamics. We show that increased and timely government aid can break this self-reinforcing cycle by reducing hospital treatment cost or other medical incentives, and thus, it can recover population from economic downfall due to continuous morbidity from antibiotic drug resistance.