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Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is an infectious disease usually caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in which case it is known as latent tuberculosis. Around 10% of latent infections progress to active disease which, if left untreated, kill about half of those affected. Typical symptoms of active TB are chronic cough with blood-containing mucus, fever, night sweats, and weight loss. Infection of other organs can cause a wide range of symptoms.
The United States Public Health Service is a collection of agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services concerned with public health, containing nine out of the department's twelve operating divisions. The Assistant Secretary for Health oversees the PHS. The Public Health Service Commissioned Corps (PHSCC) is the federal uniformed service of the PHS, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States.
Hepatitis E is inflammation of the liver caused by infection with the hepatitis E virus (HEV); it is a type of viral hepatitis. Hepatitis E has mainly a fecal-oral transmission route that is similar to hepatitis A, although the viruses are unrelated. In retrospect, the earliest known epidemic of hepatitis E occurred in 1955 in New Delhi, but the virus was not isolated until 1983 by Russian scientists investigating an outbreak in Afghanistan. HEV is a positive-sense, single-stranded, nonenveloped, RNA icosahedral virus and one of five known human hepatitis viruses: A, B, C, D, and E.
Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals". Analyzing the determinants of health of a population and the threats it faces is the basis for public health. The public can be as small as a handful of people or as large as a village or an entire city; in the case of a pandemic it may encompass several continents. The concept of health takes into account physical, psychological, and social well-being.
Community health refers to simple health services that are delivered by laymen outside hospitals and clinics. Community health is also the subset of public health that is taught to and practiced by clinicians as part of their normal duties. Community health volunteers and community health workers work with primary care providers to facilitate entry into, exit from and utilization of the formal health system by community members.
In public health, contact tracing is the process of identifying persons who may have been exposed to an infected person ("contacts") and subsequent collection of further data to assess transmission. By tracing the contacts of infected individuals, testing them for infection, and isolating or treating the infected, this public health tool aims to reduce infections in the population. In addition to infection control, contact tracing serves as a means to identify high-risk and medically vulnerable populations who might be exposed to infection and facilitate appropriate medical care. In doing so, public health officials utilize contact tracing to conduct disease surveillance and prevent outbreaks. In cases of diseases of uncertain infectious potential, contact tracing is also sometimes performed to learn about disease characteristics, including infectiousness. Contact tracing is not always the most efficient method of addressing infectious disease. In areas of high disease prevalence, screening or focused testing may be more cost-effective.
A needlestick injury is the penetration of the skin by a hypodermic needle or other sharp object that has been in contact with blood, tissue or other body fluids before the exposure. Even though the acute physiological effects of a needlestick injury are generally negligible, these injuries can lead to transmission of blood-borne diseases, placing those exposed at increased risk of infection from disease-causing pathogens, such as the hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV), and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Among healthcare workers and laboratory personnel worldwide, more than 25 blood-borne virus infections have been reported to have been caused by needlestick injuries. In addition to needlestick injuries, transmission of these viruses can also occur as a result of contamination of the mucous membranes, such as those of the eyes, with blood or body fluids, but needlestick injuries make up more than 80% of all percutaneous exposure incidents in the United States. Various other occupations are also at increased risk of needlestick injury, including law enforcement, laborers, tattoo artists, food preparers, and agricultural workers.
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A chronic condition is a health condition or disease that is persistent or otherwise long-lasting in its effects or a disease that comes with time. The term chronic is often applied when the course of the disease lasts for more than three months. Common chronic diseases include diabetes, functional gastrointestinal disorder, eczema, arthritis, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, autoimmune diseases, genetic disorders and some viral diseases such as hepatitis C and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. An illness which is lifelong because it ends in death is a terminal illness. It is possible and not unexpected for an illness to change in definition from terminal to chronic. Diabetes and HIV for example were once terminal yet are now considered chronic due to the availability of insulin for diabetics and daily drug treatment for individuals with HIV which allow these individuals to live while managing symptoms.
Pathogenic bacteria are bacteria that can cause disease. This article focuses on the bacteria that are pathogenic to humans. Most species of bacteria are harmless and are often beneficial but others can cause infectious diseases. The number of these pathogenic species in humans is estimated to be fewer than a hundred. By contrast, several thousand species are part of the gut flora present in the digestive tract.
A virucide is any physical or chemical agent that deactivates or destroys viruses. The substances are not only virucidal but can be also bactericidal, fungicidal, sporicidal or tuberculocidal.
In health care facilities, isolation represents one of several measures that can be taken to implement in infection control: the prevention of communicable diseases from being transmitted from a patient to other patients, health care workers, and visitors, or from outsiders to a particular patient. Various forms of isolation exist, in some of which contact procedures are modified, and others in which the patient is kept away from all other people. In a system devised, and periodically revised, by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), various levels of patient isolation comprise application of one or more formally described "precaution".
Graham Arthur John Ayliffe was a British medical microbiologist and Emeritus Professor in Medical Microbiology, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. He was instrumental in founding the International Federation for Infection Control (IFIC) in association with the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1987. He was elected Chair in 1990. He was also a founder member of the Hospital Infection Society and editor of its journal (1980–84), a former Chair (1980–84) and President (1988–94). The Graham Ayliffe Training Fellowship was established in 2013.
In 2000, typhoid fever caused an estimated 21.7 million illnesses and 217,000 deaths. It occurs most often in children and young adults between 5 and 19 years old. In 2013, it resulted in about 161,000 deaths – down from 181,000 in 1990. Infants, children, and adolescents in south-central and Southeast Asia experience the greatest burden of illness. Outbreaks of typhoid fever are also frequently reported from sub-Saharan Africa and countries in Southeast Asia. In the United States, about 400 cases occur each year, and 75% of these are acquired while traveling internationally.
The Croydon typhoid outbreak of 1937, also known as the Croydon epidemic of typhoid fever, was an outbreak of typhoid fever in Croydon, Surrey, now part of London, in 1937. It resulted in 341 cases of typhoid, and it caused considerable local discontent leading to a media campaign and a public inquiry.
Professor Ikechukwu Nosike Simplicius Dozie is a professor of Microbiology, a public health scientist, teacher and community health specialist currently serving at the Department of Public Health, Federal University of Technology Owerri, Nigeria. He is a member of American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene (ASTMH). Dozie was a consultant to the World Health Organization’s African programme for Onchocerciasis. He is the Director, Linkages and Advancement, Federal University of Technology Owerri.
Alasdair Macintosh Geddes is Emeritus Professor of Infection at the University of Birmingham Medical School. In 1978, as the World Health Organization (WHO) was shortly to announce that the world's last case of smallpox had occurred a year earlier in Somalia, Geddes diagnosed a British woman with the disease in Birmingham, England. She was found to be the index case of the outbreak and became the world's last reported fatality due to the disease, five years after he had gained experience on the frontline of the WHO's smallpox eradication programme in Bangladesh in 1973.
Lucas Alfred Derrick Tovey FRCPath, FRCOG, was a British pathologist who shortly after being appointed consultant at St Luke's Hospital in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, recognised the first cases of smallpox in the early days of the Bradford smallpox outbreak of 1962. Over the subsequent three days a further eight cases of smallpox were detected and Tovey subsequently became in charge of infection control at St Luke's and given the responsibility of liaising with the medical officers of health and the press. He later attributed the successful containment of the outbreak to effective contact tracing, surveillance and vaccination.
COVID-19 is predicted to become an endemic disease by many experts. The observed behavior of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, suggests it is unlikely it will die out, and the lack of a COVID-19 vaccine that provides long-lasting immunity against infection means it cannot immediately be eradicated; thus, a future transition to an endemic phase appears probable. In an endemic phase, people would continue to become infected and ill, but in relatively stable numbers. Such a transition may take years or decades. Precisely what would constitute an endemic phase is contested.
Surinder Singh Bakhshi is a British writer and physician, who in 1977 was appointed medical officer of environmental health to the Birmingham Area Health Authority, where he led the successful contact tracing and quarantine effort in the community during the 1978 smallpox outbreak in the United Kingdom.
References
- ↑ "The medical officer of environmental health". Public Health. 95 (5): 247–249. September 1981. doi:10.1016/s0033-3506(81)80014-5. ISSN 0033-3506. PMID 7302095.
- ↑ Walrond, H. A. (1978). The role of the medical officer in environmental health (PDF). Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-721221-2.
- ↑ Jessop, E. G.; Horsley, S. D. (1985). "Microcomputers and the work of a medical officer for environmental health at district" . Community Medicine. 7 (2): 122–125. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.pubmed.a043769. ISSN 0142-2456. JSTOR 45156444. PMID 4017529.
- ↑ Lówbúrý, Édwárd Jóséph Lístér; Ayliffe, G. A. J.; Geddes, Andrew M.; Williams, J. D. (1981). "2. Administration and responsibility". Control of Hospital Infection: A Practical Handbook (2nd ed.). Springer. p. 23. ISBN 978-1-4899-6884-5.
- ↑ Inquiry publishes expert report on Public Health and Administration | Infected Blood Inquiry (PDF). APS Group. August 2022.
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