scholarly journals Quarantine and the Law: The 2003 SARS Experience in Canada (A New Disease Calls on Old Public Health Tools)

1969 ◽  
pp. 529
Author(s):  
Nola M. Ries
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Public Health Intervention ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Infectious Agent ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Her Family ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health Authorities ◽  
Public Health Authorities ◽  
The Impact

The authority to quarantine individuals was tested by the 2003 global outbreak of SARS. Quarantine was used during that lime as a public health intervention tool to attempt to control the disease in Toronto. The outbreak put the public health preparedness of the Ontario legal system to the test. This article examines the legal issues related to the use of quarantine as a tool to control infectious disease outbreaks using the Ontario SARS epidemic as a case study. The author first analyzes the laws authorizing public health officials to use quarantine and then identifies the legislative gaps that SARS exposed in these laws. The article then looks at the current legislative reform efforts to create a more prepared legal environment in the event of another public health crisis such as SARS. In addition, the impact of quarantine on an individual and his or her family, including social and economic impacts, as well as its effect on the health care system is discussed. Finally, the legal limits on the use of quarantine are further examined. The author concludes that, because it is likely that a novel infectious agent such as SARS will surface in the future, the public health authorities must be vigilant by ensuring public health legal preparedness.

scholarly journals Control of Raw Pork Liver Sausage Production Can Reduce the Prevalence of HEV Infection

Pathogens ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 107
Author(s):  
Paolo Ripellino ◽  
Enea Pianezzi ◽  
Gladys Martinetti ◽  
Cinzia Zehnder ◽  
Barbara Mathis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Public Health Intervention ◽  
Hepatitis E ◽  
Local Public Health ◽  
The Public ◽  
Pork Liver ◽  
Health Authorities ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Public Health Authorities

After an acute hepatitis E (HEV) outbreak in Southern Switzerland, in January 2017 the local public health authorities started an active program of food chain control and public education. In this retrospective study, we analysed all laboratory-confirmed acute cases of HEV infection diagnosed between 2014 and 2020. In the period before the public health intervention, the number of cases increased steadily from 2014 (4 of 40 tests, 10%) reaching a peak in the last quarter of 2016 (42 of 285 tests, 14.7 %). Afterwards, the number of positive cases decreased steadily, reaching its lowest value (0.3%) in the second quarter of 2019. There was a statistically significant difference between the frequency of positive cases and period of testing, i.e., before and after the introduction of the public health interventions. Our study shows that active public health measures to control sausages containing raw pork liver can reduce the prevalence of HEV infection.

scholarly journals An Appraisal of Communication Practices Demonstrated by Romanian District Public Health Authorities at the Outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 2500
Author(s):  
Mariana Cernicova-Buca ◽  
Adina Palea
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Professional Training ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Public Information ◽  
Communication Strategy ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Health Crisis ◽  
Health Authorities ◽  
Public Health Authorities

Communication during an ongoing crisis is a challenging task that becomes even more demanding during a public health crisis. Early in the start of the pandemic, global leaders called upon the public to reject infodemics and access official sources. This article focuses on the communicative aspects of health services management, with a particular focus on the communication strategy of the Romanian district public health authorities during the COVID-19 lockdown, as seen on official websites and social networks. The 15 most affected districts were selected, according to the officially reported health cases. The issued press releases and the posts on Facebook pages show an uneven experience on the part of district authorities in dealing with public information campaigns. In addition, the results of the study indicate a lack of sustainable communication approaches as well as the need of professional training and strategy in dealing with the public health crisis. From a communication point of view, a strategic approach on behalf of the public health sector is crucial to enhance the preparedness of appropriate institutions to act during emergencies and to respond to the needs of the media and the public with timely, correct, and meaningful information.

scholarly journals Massive SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR Testing on Rural Communities in Manabi Province (Ecuador) Reveals Severe COVID-19 Outbreaks

2021 ◽  
Vol 104 (4) ◽  
pp. 1493-1494
Author(s):  
Esteban Ortiz-Prado ◽  
Aquiles R. Henriquez-Trujillo ◽  
Ismar A. Rivera-Olivero ◽  
Byron Freire-Paspuel ◽  
Alexander Paolo Vallejo-Janeta ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Coastal Region ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Rt Pcr ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health Infrastructure ◽  
Health Authorities ◽  
Public Health Authorities ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACTRural communities from Latin America are particularly susceptible to develop serious outbreaks of infectious diseases. Inadequate diagnosis and poor health infrastructure jeopardize proper contact tracing and other actions to reduce the impact of COVID-19 in the region. We herein describe the preliminary data of our ongoing fieldwork of massive testing among nonhospitalized rural population in Manabi Province of the coastal region of Ecuador. A total of 1,479 people from six different rural communities were tested for SARS-CoV-2 by RT-qPCR following the CDC protocol; 350 individuals tested positive, resulting in an overall attack rate of 23.7% for SARS-CoV-2 infection. This ultrahigh prevalence must urge to the public health authorities from Ecuador to take immediate actions to counteract this dramatic scenario in Manabi Province and to improve SARS-CoV-2 testing countrywide.

Insomnia, Medicalization, and Expert Knowledge

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenton Kroker
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Public Health Intervention ◽  
Sleep Medicine ◽  
Health Intervention ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Boundary Object ◽  
Medical Expertise ◽  
Health Authorities ◽  
Public Health Authorities

Historians have clearly articulated the ways in which sleeplessness has long been part of the human condition. As an object of medical expertise and public health intervention, however, insomnia is a much more recent invention, having gained its status as a pathology during the 1870s. But while insomnia has attracted considerable and concerted attention from public health authorities allied with sleep medicine specialists, this phenomenon is not well explained by classical medicalization theory, in part because it is the sleepless sufferers, not the medical experts, who typically have the authority to diagnose insomnia. The dynamics of insomnia’s history are better described as those of a boundary object, around which concepts and practices of biomedicine and psychology coalesce to frame contemporary notions of self-medicalization and self-experiment.

scholarly journals The Impact of Covid-19 Public Health Policies on Persons with Disability and their Caregivers in Malta

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-37
Author(s):  
Andrew Camilleri ◽  
Samantha Pace Gasan ◽  
Andrew Azzopardi
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
World Health Organisation ◽  
World Health ◽  
Persons With Disabilities ◽  
Health Authorities ◽  
Essential Services ◽  
Public Health Authorities ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
Restrictive Measures ◽  
The Impact

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a global health pandemic, due to the spread of a novel coronavirus, later named “Covid-19”. The spread of Covid-19 led to social isolation, distancing and a number of restrictive measures in Malta.  The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of Covid-19 and the subsequent restrictive measures on persons with disability and their caregivers and families in Malta. Using thematic analysis, the study found that a variety of impacts ranging from a sense of isolation, lack of essential services being provided, additional difficulties encountered at the place of work and education and measures that were not sufficiently tailored for persons with disability issued by public health authorities. Underlying the additional difficulties brought about by Covid-19, structural difficulties to access essential services as well as ignorance from policy makers and politicians and the added “vulnerable-ization” of persons with disabilities were found to be highly impacting factors that pervade the experience of persons with disabilities and their caregivers.

The Public Health Police

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trevor Hoppe
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Hiv Positive ◽  
Local Health ◽  
Health Departments ◽  
Adherence To Treatment ◽  
The Public ◽  
Treatment Regimens ◽  
Health Authorities ◽  
Public Health Authorities ◽  
Local Health Authorities

As the HIV epidemic wore on in the 2000s, public health authorities became enamored with the idea of “ending AIDS.” That is, if they could just get HIV-positive people to take their pills and stop infecting other people. Health departments began to track HIV-positive clients more closely, aiming to control their behavior and ensure their adherence to treatment regimens. This chapter explores how local health authorities ensure that HIV-positive clients behave in a manner officials deem responsible—and how they catch and punish those who do not. While the state maintains that the work of local health officials is done solely in the interests of promoting public health, their efforts to control HIV-positive clients reveal that they are also engaged in policing and law enforcement.

scholarly journals Rational trust in resilient health systems

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (7) ◽  
pp. 553-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonja Kristine Kittelsen ◽  
Vincent Charles Keating
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health System ◽  
Health Systems ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Health Emergencies ◽  
Health Authorities ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Public Health Authorities ◽  
System Resilience ◽  
Relevant Component

AbstractThe 2014–15 Ebola epidemic in West Africa highlighted the significance of trust between the public and public health authorities in the mitigation of health crises. Since the end of the epidemic, there has been a focus amongst scholars and practitioners on building resilient health systems, which many see as an important precondition for successfully combatting future outbreaks. While trust has been acknowledged as a relevant component of health system resilience, we argue for a more sustained theoretical engagement with underlying models of trust in the literature. This article takes a first step in showing the importance of theoretical engagement by focusing on the appeal to rational models of trust in particular in the health system resilience literature, and how currently unconsidered assumptions in this model cast doubt on the effectiveness of strategies to generate trust, and therein resilience, during acute public health emergencies.

scholarly journals Geographic Information Systems (GIS), an Informative Start for Challenging Process of Etiologic Investigation of Diseases and Public Health Policy Making

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Alireza Mosavi Jarrahi ◽  
M Zare ◽  
A Sadeghi
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Population Characteristics ◽  
Environment Interaction ◽  
Gis Technology ◽  
The Public ◽  
Technological Disasters ◽  
Health Authorities ◽  
Public Health Authorities ◽  
Health And Disease

Background: The public health has been always concerned of the immediate environment of human as causal factors for different diseases and health outcomes. Epidemiology, as one of the fundamental basis of public health, is concerned of how diseases are distributed in terms of geographical, chronological, and human population characteristics and employees the descriptive nature of such spread to draw conclusion on the etiology of health or disease utcome for further policy making on prevention of disease or promotion of health.Methods: In this paper, we present the importance of GIS technology in epidemiology from both descriptive and etiologic standpoints and elaborate how this technology can stand in the forefront of disease and health outcome measures in the coming decades. The paper will address the history of geo-related health and disease issues. The mapping tool as a traditionally strong resource in the public health will be explored. The advances in Information Technology and one of its best utilized offshoot, GIS, in Health and disease will be discussed. How the huge repository of generated or ever generating geo-related data and information is utilized to address etiology of diseases or to help public health authorities in making informed policy making decisions are explored.Results: The utilization of GIS technology in diseases with intermittent host such as malaria, yellow fever, or other parasitic diseases has already been well established. The GIS technology and its utilization in chronic and degenerative diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and aging are under development and new frontiers are discovering. The limitation of GIS technology in addressing host environment interaction in micro-environment (at the molecular biology and tissue pathogenicity level) and gene–environment interaction (at the individual level) will further be discussed.Conclusion: We then distress on the efficient use of GIS both in the etiologic investigation of diseases and health events as well as the utilization of the GIS technology as a administrative tool in the help of public health authorities and policy makers in strategic management of health of a community or emergency management of man-made or technological disasters (e.g., wars) or naturally occurring disasters (e.g., earthquake and floods).

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