Communicable Illness Mitigation Strategies for Traveling Elite Sporting Organizations

Context: Transmission of communicable diseases observed in sporting organizations is often preventable. Early detection, isolation, and treatment can significantly diminish time lost. Until recently, there has been a paucity of standardized guidelines outlining feasible, preventable measures to protect both athletes and staff from contagious illnesses. Therefore, the purpose of this narrative was to highlight optimal prevention practices for transmission mitigation, with a particular focus on hygiene activity and travel considerations in professional sporting organizations. Evidence Acquisition: Current recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and peer-reviewed journals. Study Design: Clinical review. Level of Evidence: Level 5. Results: Communicable illness prevention strategies begin at the level of sufficient personal hygiene practices. Common area surface cleaning recommendations, including shared equipment sanitization between usage as well as designated equipment use to specific athletes, should be considered to minimize cross-contamination, in particular, for liked-position players. Intelligent design for shared areas can include redistributing the layout of communal spaces, most feasibly, spreading locker designation a minimum distance of 6 ft from one another. Travel considerations can include placing most susceptible passengers closest to window seating, boarding last and exiting first. Team physicians should have knowledge of essential personnel medical histories in an effort to risk stratify staff members and players in the setting of communicable disease. Conclusion: Providing a framework for illness management and prevention is important when considering the effects on player health, missed time, performance, and overall cost. Containment of commonly observed communicable illnesses can be optimized with sufficient personal hygiene practices, common area surface cleaning recommendations, intelligent design for shared areas, travel and hotel considerations, as well as appropriate screening tools and isolation techniques. Strength of Recommendation Taxonomy (SORT): B.

Palliative care for children with communicable illnesses

Whilst non-communicable diseases provided the impetus for the development of children’s palliative care (CPC) in the developed world, it was a single communicable illness human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) that was the catalyst for the development of many CPC programmes in the developing world. Whilst considerable gains have been made in preventing and controlling paediatric AIDS globally, there is still benefit to an integrated palliative care approach to the care of these children and especially for those living in countries without access to anti-retrovirals. Furthermore, there are many other communicable diseases associated with significant health-related suffering in children that could benefit from palliative care. This chapter proposes grouping these diseases using the well-known Association for Children with Terminal Conditions (ACT) categorization and discusses examples of important communicable diseases in each category. The need for improved CPC as part of the humanitarian response to acute communicable disease outbreaks such as Ebola virus disease is also explored.

Illness Profile of a Disaster Prone Bangladeshi Village

This chapter examines the illness profile of a disaster-prone village Char Majhira at Sariakandi Upazilla of Bogra district in Bangladesh which frequently affect various communicable and non-communicable illness. The researcher had administered participant observation, a thick description of villagers, an in-depth interview and FGD for data collection by using purposive sampling of the 250 households during November 2010 to June 2011. The salient health hazards of Char Majhira were rickets and vision problems, and the leading causes of death were asthma, neoplasm, respiratory infections, senility, stroke, various conditions during the neonatal period, accidents, cardiovascular illness other than stroke and diarrheal diseases, hepatitis and hypertension. As this is a chapter about illness profile of a disaster-prone village, it obviously will be helpful for development planners and policy makers to take essential steps for the prevention of illness in the disadvantage people in Bangladesh, as well as rest of the world.