Discuss about the Communicable Disease Epidemiology and Control.
Communicable diseases are persistently a fundamental public health priority both in Australia and the globe at large. Among the most pressing of such communicable diseases is Ebola. Just as a serious illness, Ebola is caused by Ebola virus that brings about acute and serious illnesses and harms to the human body if not treated (Crawford, 2015). The disease was first noticed in 1976 in 2 simultaneous outbreaks one in the Democratic Republic of Congo and another in South Sudan.
The worst outbreak in West Africa was experienced between 2014 and 2016 in which there was a complex outbreak of Ebola. This outbreak recorded the highest number of cases and deaths since it was first noticed in 1976. Ebola is a deadly illness that is mostly characterized by internal and external bleeding of body parts, fever, body aches and diarrhea caused by a virus that damages the body’s immune system. It causes blood-clotting cells to drop because it ultimately weakens the immune system of the body.
There have not been any reported cases of Ebola virus among the citizens of Australia or among Australian animals. But even with this, the government of Australia has been careful enough and taken the most appropriate precautions to ensure the security and safety of the Australia people (Webber, 2009). The Australian government recognizes the social and economic situation and the critical medical conditions that West African countries had to bear when they were affected by the virus. In a bid to protect her citizens, the government of Australia performs screening her citizens to protect the health of the country at large (Lederberg, 2012).
In Australia and Internationally Ebola are transmitted through human to human contact through broken skin, mucous or saliva membranes (Richards, 2016). When the blood secretions, organs and bodily fluids that are infected come to contact there is a high possibility of transmission. Contaminated surfaces and materials like bedding and clothing also promote the transmission.
It is believed that Ebola viruses are naturally hosted in fruit bats with the highest levels of outbreaks being recorded among other species as monkeys, forest antelope, gorillas, and chimpanzees. It is introduced into the human population via close contact with the organs, blood or any other bodily fluids of the infected animal whether dead or alive. Hence routes of transmission mainly include skin and other external commonly used materials like cutting blades and sheets. The virus can be spread from an individual to another through body fluids among them waste products and blood. It is also spread sexually when semen of a man who has recovered from Ebola has sex with a woman or even orally (Stanhope, 2015).
The risk factors of contracting Ebola is very low in most people with all the cases of death or illness found to have occurred in Africa except for a laboratory contamination that took place in England and Russia. The risk of contracting this infectious disease is increased whenever people travels to or live in African countries that have been hit by the outbreak. Among those at the highest risks include;
There are identified five types of Ebola out of which four have been found to cause diseases in humans. The types of Ebola include;
Till this date, the natural harbor of Ebola virus has not been established. This then translates that the way in which the virus first appears in a human being is unknown. It is believed that the first patient becomes infected by an already infected animal. The first patient gets infected when in contact with animals such as a fruit bat or primate, apes, and monkeys. This is called spillover event. Person to Person transmission follows and can lead to large numbers of affected persons. In some previous Ebola outbreaks, primates also were affected by Ebola and multiple spillover events occurred when people touched or ate infected primates (guides, 2014).
Ebola virus, just like any other viruses is acellular and obligate and requires a host in order to be biologically active. The virus has the ability to survive while outside the body of the host even though at reduced survival levels. Once the virus manages to get into the body of the host, it receptor will be attached to a specific receptor in the plasma membrane and upon the attachment, the genome of the virus is integrated into the DNA of the host. The pathonogecity of the virus is increased as the virus mutates and divided between the hosts. Due to the presence of glycoproteins, Ebola virus is found to be very effective in infecting the host (Evans, 2016).
The glycoproteins bind to the specific receptor of the host when exposed to the environment. They are an integral part in facilitating the communication between other cells in the host and the outside environment (Stanhope, 2015). Most of the envelope viruses like Ebola virus are found in abundance in sheds of animal waste as such environments enable the virus to persevere the environment outside the body of the host. Such persistence increases the chances of reoccurrence of the virus and thereby increasing the chances of infection among human beings. This leaves the human population with the task of ensuring proper management and taking care of the environment as a strategy in the prevention of the outbreak of Ebola (Pray, 2016).
Poor sanitation is a major health issue in Africa thereby exposing African countries to the aftermath of the survival of Ebola virus (Crawford, 2015). The virus can easily be transmitted from one person to another by the contamination of water by either fecal containing wastes or any other virus containing wastes. The scarcity of food is yet another environmental factor that increases the chances of contracting Ebola virus. In the process of hunting animals for food, people come into contact with infected animals. Still, malnutrition is yet another factor for the cause of the disease in Africa.
Lack of the nutrients required by the body leads to psychological suffering among the population thereby inhibiting the ability of the body to adequately respond to the environment thereby increasing the vulnerability (Nelson, 2014). Besides the mentioned human factors, scientists have found out that filo viruses for example Ebola thrive well in the tropical regions of Africa an most specifically in the humid rainforests. This is the same cases experienced in the Philippines which have relatively the same seasons and temperature changes as the tropical regions of Africa.
Ebola is not spread through air, water or in general by food. Mosquitoes and other insects likewise do not spread Ebola virus. In Africa, it spreads mostly through handling bush meat got from hunting common game animals like wild pigs (Preston, 2010).
Other areas have registered exotic and unusual pets such as monkeys, apes or pigs as having high risks of being infected and shedding Ebola virus if they are exposed to the virus. Hence pets do transmit Ebola virus, however, it is not yet confirmed whether pet body fur can transmit Ebola virus.
Centre for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that public health officials in collaboration with a veterinarian evaluate the pet’s risk of exposure to the virus; close contact or exposure to blood or body fluids of an Ebola patient (Pray, 2016). Based on this evaluation as well as the specific situation, local and state human and animal health officials will determine how the pet should be handled because currently there are no routine tests for Ebola available for pests.
Pigs are the only animals currently very highly susceptible to any Ebola virus. Pigs have been found to be naturally infected with the Reston virus which is a constituent species of the Ebola virus that, however, does not cause sickness to humans (Stanhope, 2015).
There are four most common types of epidemiological studies:
Epidemiology defined to be the study of the causes, existence management, and spread of health and illnesses in a certain niche population. Infection is the multiplication of organisms inside the tissues of the host and may eventually culminate into an illness.
A carrier refers to any individual with no overt disease who bears infectious organisms (guides, 2014). There are various steps applied in the investigation of disease-causing epidemics. Means and methods have advanced tremendously overtime since the time of Hippocrates. Depending on the technique and analysis, epidemiology varies depending on the type of the disease in question. Here is a process that can be used in Epidemiology Study.
Acknowledging the existence of a problem: It is quite expensive to undertake full studies in epidemiology besides the tiresome nature of the task. It is important to establish the need of a research before a study is undertaken (Wallace, 2014).
? Justification of the homogeneity of the undertaking: conclusions drawn from homogenous occurrences are likely to be suspected and thus it is required that the undertaken events to be the real cases of the disease under study (Singer, 2016).
Gather all the occurrences: Inspecting an enormous data would yield more accurate results hence it is important to gather as much information and one can to enable evaluation of the greatest available risk factors. Various strategies can be deployed in the gathering of the events including from records of hospitals and epidemiological study methods.
Checking the trends and patterns: The similarities in the occurrences which could help in the identification of the main risk factors that would facilitate the contraction of the disease are considered in this. Such risks can be identified with the help of epidemic curves. (Webber, 2009).
Formulate a hypothesis: The researcher may consider postulating as to the extent of the correlation between the disease and the probable agent causing the disease upon observation of the trend in the cases.
Test the hypothesis: Uncontrollable variations are found to be a pollutant to the epidemiological studies conducted since these experiments can never be done in a laboratory thereby making interpretation of the found results a bit of a challenge. This often makes the results difficult to interpret. To assess the correlation between the disease and the disease-causing factors, two methods are deployed; Koch’s postulates and Bradford-Hill Criteria
Publish the results: The found out result are published and the findings made known so as the necessary adjustments can be made.
Prevention and Control of Communicable Diseases
There is the need to prevent and control of Ebola. Among the strategies include;
Undertakings which provide tourism services shall inform their customers about to travel to a foreign country of:
Quarantine is a restriction of the movement of persons, goods, and vehicles and of the provision of services which is established with the aim of preventing any extremely dangerous communicable disease from spreading outside the focus of the disease (Atherstone, 2014).
For the purposes of this Act, the focus of a disease is a delimited territory containing persons suffering from a communicable disease and persons suspected of being infected and where intensified surveillance over the residents is exercised by the health protection authorities (Cavendish, 2011).
Quarantine is established by a written order of the county government on the proposal of the director general of the public health.
Quarantine requirements and the procedure for compliance therewith shall be established by a regulation of the minister responsible for the area.
Quarantine is ended by a documented instruction of the public health officers on the recommendation by the general director of the public after the outbreak of the communicable disease has been thwarted, the fulfillments of the requirements for the control and the and attention on the disease has been declared of no impact any more (Kahn, 2015).
The outlining of quarantine requirements and the bringing to an end thereof shall be to the public knowledge through the various available sources of media
Public health surveillance is the ongoing systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, closely integrated with the timely dissemination of these data to those responsible for preventing and controlling disease and injury. Public health surveillance is a tool to estimate the health status and behavior of the populations served by ministries of health, ministries of finance, and donors.
Because surveillance can directly measure what is going on in the population, it is useful both for measuring the need for interventions and for directly measuring the effects of interventions. The purpose of surveillance is to empower decision makers to lead and manage more effectively by providing timely, useful evidence (Bouzid, 2016).
The methods deployed in the surveillance of infectious diseases in a particular country are a factor of the economic status of the country. That means developed countries are likely to enjoy more complex data surveillance techniques as opposed to economically endangered countries.
Analysis of surveillance information is based on person, place and/or time. There should be continuous review of the hospital data by qualified technical personnel so as to ascertain that the data relied upon for the operations of the hospital is valid and not containing any elements of misleading information (Lyons-Weiler, 2015). Tables and graphs are found to be the most appropriate when presenting data due to their simplistic nature. It is worth to note that the data should be delivered to the policy makers in time so as to enable them include the collected and interpreted data when coming up with programs deemed to be of necessity in the surveillance of data.
The fast changing informatics field of health, concerned with gathering, classification, preservation, extraction, analysis and display of volumes of health data, gives an opportunity for real integrated public health surveillance depending on the standardization of data, infrastructure of communication, and regulations bordering access and safety of health data. By incorporating a systematic approach to the contents of data standard, surveillance will benefit (Ealy, 2015). An example is the deployment of systems based on standards in supporting the automation of reporting diagnostic laboratory results electronically enabling the identification of noticed diseases thereby enhancing quick responses and corrective measures by the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
References
Atherstone, C. (2014). Ebola risk assessment in the pig value chain in Uganda. Kampala: ILRI (aka ILCA and ILRAD).
Bonita, R. (2012). Basic Epidemiology. Geneva: World Health Organization.
Bouzid, B. (2016). Examining the Role of Environmental Change on Emerging Infectious Diseases and Pandemics. Manchester: IGI Global.
Cavendish, M. (2011). Diseases and Disorders, Volume 1. Machester: Marshall Cavendish.
Crawford, D. H. (2015). Ebola: Profile of a Killer Virus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ealy, G. (2015). Ebola. Oxford: Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Evans, N. G. (2016). Ebola’s Message: Public Health and Medicine in the Twenty-First Century. Chicago: MIT Press.
guides, e. &. (2014). Ebola: Information for Healthcare Workers and Settings – For Your Reference. California: eregs & guides.
Kahn, C. R. (2015). Joslin’s Diabetes Mellitus: Edited by C. Ronald Kahn … [et Al.]. Salt Lake: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Lederberg, J. (2012). Emerging Infections: Microbial Threats to Health in the United States. Bombay: National Academies.
Lyons-Weiler, J. (2015). Ebola: An Evolving Story. London: World Scientific.
Mack, A. (2016). The Ebola Epidemic in West Africa: Proceedings of a Workshop. Nairobi: National Academies Press.
Medicine, A. o. (2010). Annals of the Academy of Medicine, Singapore, Volume 26. London: Academy of Medicine.
Morain, S. A. (2012). Environmental Tracking for Public Health Surveillance. Los Angeles: CRC Press.
Nelson, K. E. (2014). Infectious Disease Epidemiology. Oxford: Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Organization, W. H. (2013). Emerging Issues in Water and Infectious Disease. New York: World Health Organization.
Pray, L. (2016). The Impact of Globalization on Infectious Disease Emergence and Control: Exploring the Consequences and Opportunities: Workshop Summary. Manchester: National Academies Press.
Preston, R. (2010). The Hot Zone. Oxford: Paw Prints.
Richards, P. (2016). Ebola: How a People’s Science Helped End an Epidemic. Freetown: Zed Books Ltd.
Singer, M. (2016). A Companion to the Anthropology of Environmental Health. Salt Lake: John Wiley & Sons.
Stanhope, M. (2015). Public Health Nursing: Population-centered Health Care in the Community. New York: Elsevier Health Sciences.
Wallace, R. B. (2014). Maxey-Rosenau-Last Public Health and Preventive Medicine: Fifteenth Edition. London: McGraw Hill Professional.
Webber, R. (2009). Communicable Disease Epidemiology and Control: A Global Perspective. New York: CABI.
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