Assessing the Impact of Traditional Funeral Practices on Ebola Transmission Dynamics: A Stochastic Approach

Socio-cultural factors, especially traditional burial practices that entail direct contact with deceased individuals, significantly affect the duration and transmission dynamics of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). Deterministic models have offered essential insights into the spread of EVD; however, they often neglect the inherent randomness in disease distribution and do not sufficiently address the increased transmission risks linked to funeral practices. This study presents a new stochastic model, referred to as [Formula: see text], which includes a ’Funeral’ compartment [Formula: see text] to account for the deceased, acknowledging the significant impact of funeral-related activities on viral transmission. We modify the deterministic model by adding environmental white noise to create a set of stochastic differential equations that are more realistic in terms of their unpredictable nature of real-world epidemics. We provide a rigorous proof of the existence, uniqueness, and positivity of global solutions to the stochastic model. Our analysis yields a stochastic reproduction number [Formula: see text] and delineates precise extinction and persistence thresholds: when [Formula: see text], the disease diminishes exponentially, while for [Formula: see text], the model permits a singular stationary distribution, signifying disease persistence in a stochastic context. Numerical simulations employing the Milstein method corroborate these theoretical results. Sensitivity analysis indicates that an increase in the transmission rate during funerals [Formula: see text] and the overall transmission rate [Formula: see text] substantially intensifies the severity of outbreaks. Moreover, elevated levels of environmental noise contribute to greater fluctuations in infection patterns. Along with vaccination and contact tracking, this study emphasizes the importance of culturally relevant burial management procedures in EVD reduction initiatives. By simultaneously simulating cultural transmission pathways and environmental unpredictability, this approach fills a fundamental vacuum and provides a more comprehensive framework for developing public health policies and responding to epidemics.