  Wolbachia infection in Anopheles albimanus mosquitoes can render mosquitoes
less capable of spreading malaria. We develop and analyze an ordinary
differential equation model to evaluate the effectiveness of Wolbachia-based
vector control strategies among wild Anopheles mosquitoes in Haiti. The model
tracks the mosquito life stages, including egg, larva, and adult (male and
female). It also accounts for critical biological effects, such as the maternal
transmission of Wolbachia through infected females and cytoplasmic
incompatibility, which effectively sterilizes uninfected females when they mate
with infected males. We derived and interpreted dimensionless numbers,
including the basic reproductive number and next-generation numbers. The
proposed system presents backward bifurcation, which indicates a threshold
infection that needs to be exceeded to establish a stable Wolbachia infection.
The sensitivity analysis ranks the relative importance of the epidemiological
parameters at the baseline. We simulate different intervention scenarios,
including pre-release mitigation using larviciding and thermal fogging before
the release, multiple releases of infected populations, and different release
timing. Our simulations show that the most efficient approach to establishing
Wolbachia is to release all the infected mosquitoes immediately after the
pre-release mitigation process. Also, the model predicts that it is more
efficient to release during the dry season than the wet season.
