Popularizing health education, building public health facilities or regular screening? How to prevent schistosomiasis more effectively in African children

Due to the lack of safe drinking water and public health facilities, as well as the low popularity of health education, schistosomiasis is a prominent problem in African children. Considering that the process of schistosomiasis prevention in African children is dynamic and continuous, this paper uses a differential game model to study how to prevent schistosomiasis in African children. Common prevention modes of schistosomiasis in African children include universal health education, construction of public health facilities, and regular screening. This paper constructs a differential game model under these three modes, and compares and analyzes the equilibrium results. Finally, the study concludes that when the benefits obtained by government and social forces from preventing schistosomiasis at a unit level are small, universal health education mode can make the government and social forces obtain the maximum social benefits, followed by the establishment of public health facilities mode, and the minimum social benefits obtained by regular screening mode. With the increase of the benefits obtained by government and social forces from preventing schistosomiasis at a unit level, the social benefits obtained by government and social forces from regular screening mode decrease first and then increase. When the benefits obtained from preventing schistosomiasis at a unit level increase to a certain extent, the social benefits obtained by regular screening are the maximum.