This paper addresses the synergistic interaction between HIV and mycobacterium tuberculosis using a deterministic model, which incorporates many of the essential biological and epidemiological features of the two dis- eases. In the absence of TB infection, the model (HIV-only model) is shown to have a globally asymptotically stable, disease-free equilibrium whenever the associated reproduction number is less than unity and has a unique endemic equilibrium whenever this number exceeds unity. On the other hand, the model with TB alone (TB-only model) undergoes the phenomenon of back- ward bifurcation, where the stable disease-free equilibrium co-exists with a stable endemic equilibrium when the associated reproduction threshold is less than unity. The analysis of the respective reproduction thresholds shows that the use of a targeted HIV treatment (using anti-retroviral drugs) strategy can lead to effective control of HIV provided it reduces the relative infectiousness of individuals treated (in comparison to untreated HIV-infected individuals) below a certain threshold. The full model, with both HIV and TB, is simu- lated to evaluate the impact of the various treatment strategies. It is shown that the HIV-only treatment strategy saves more cases of the mixed infection than the TB-only strategy. Further, for low treatment rates, the mixed-only strategy saves the least number of cases (of HIV, TB, and the mixed infection) in comparison to the other strategies. Thus, this study shows that if resources are limited, then targeting such resources to treating one of the diseases is more beneficial in reducing new cases of the mixed infection than targeting the mixed infection only diseases. Finally, the universal strategy saves more cases of the mixed infection than any of the other strategies.

One major drawback associated with the use of anti-retroviral drugs in curtailing HIV spread in a population is the emergence and transmission of HIV strains that are resistant to these drugs. This paper presents a deterministic HIV treatment model, which incorporates a wild (drug sensitive) and a drug-resistant strain, for gaining insights into the dynamical features of the two strains, and determining effective ways to control HIV spread under this situation. Rigorous qualitative analysis of the model reveals that it has a globally asymptotically stable disease-free equilibrium whenever a certain epidemiological threshold ( ) is less than unity and that the disease will persist in the population when this threshold exceeds unity. Further, for the case where , it is shown that the model can have two co-existing endemic equilibria, and competitive exclusion phenomenon occurs whenever the associated reproduction number of the resistant strain ( ) is greater than that of the wild strain ( ). Unlike in the treatment model, it is shown that the model without treatment can have a family of infinitely many endemic equilibria when its associated epidemiological threshold (ℛ₀) exceeds unity. For the case when and , it is shown that the widespread use of treatment against the wild strain can lead to its elimination from the community if the associated reduction in infectiousness of infected individuals (treated for the wild strain) does not exceed a certain threshold value (in this case, the use of treatment is expected to make ).