Impact of social behaviors on HIV epidemic: A computer simulation view

Abstract

HIV/AIDS prevention has been a major concern for health department of every government. We propose to assess the impact of social behaviors on HIV epidemic. To do so, we build an agent-based computer simulation model to implement a sexual network with the existence of high risk population. In order to categorize the high risk population and low risk population, we make use of some criteria such as the number of sexual partners per agent, condom usage, and degree of "faithfulness" towards long-term partners. We also introduce the concept of Free-Links and Fix-Links to denote the short-term and long-term partners' general tendency. We reproduce the epidemic curve of HIV reported cases in the male homosexual community in Taiwan, and try to assess the influence of different policies on the social behavior of each individual and the consequences on the spreading of the epidemic.