Application of Homotopy Perturbation and Variational Iteration Methods to SIR Epidemic Model

Children born are susceptible to various diseases such as mumps, chicken pox etc. These diseases are the most common form of infectious diseases. In recent years, scientists have been trying to devise strategies to fight against these diseases. Since vaccination is considered to be the most effective strategy against childhood diseases, the development of the framework that would predict the optimal vaccine coverage level needed to prevent the spread of diseases is crucial. The SIR model is a standard compartmental model that has been used to describe many epidemiological diseases. In this article two methods namely Homotopy Perturbation Method (HPM) and Variational Iteration Method (VIM) are employed to compute an approximation to the solution of non-linear system of differential equations governing the problem. The obtained results are compared with those obtained by Adomian Decomposition Method (ADM). This research reveals that although the obtained results are the same, HPM and VIM are much more robust, more convenient and efficient in comparison to ADM.