Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is the most common sexually transmitted infection worldwide and the leading cause of cervical cancer, the second most frequent cancer among women in Cameroon. The transmission dynamics of HPV are governed by several epidemiological characteristics, whose rigorous evaluation is rarely undertaken when the population is structured by gender. This work aims to analytically evaluate these characteristics for HPV transmission in Cameroon from a gender perspective, in order to predict the behaviour of the infection within each sub-population.
Two compartmental models were developed: a homogeneous model for a single population, followed by an extension to a two-sex framework. The conservation law for the total number of sexual contacts made it possible to decouple the equations for female and male infected individuals, allowing the system to be reduced to two independent Bernoulli equations, which were solved analytically. This explicit resolution enabled the computation of the basic reproduction number, as well as the epidemic peak, the inflection points, and their times of occurrence within each sub-population. A normalized sensitivity analysis and an analytical assessment of gender asymmetry further completed the study. Model parameters were estimated from Cameroonian demographic and epidemiological data.
The epidemic peak reaches 45.22% among women after 11.16 years and 32.92% among men after 19.82 years, revealing a more pronounced female vulnerability and a faster spread within this sub-population. The inflection points, which correspond to the moment when the spread of the infection reaches its maximum speed, are observed at 5.04 years among women and 8.51 years among men. These periods identify critical windows for public health interventions, during which control measures are expected to achieve the greatest impact. The sensitivity analysis showed that contact rates and transmission probabilities are the most influential drivers of the endemic intensity.
This work proposes an original analytical approach to the transient behaviour of HPV transmission. The asymmetries observed between men and women support sex-differentiated care, in line with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) 90-70-90 targets for Cameroon.
