Disaster medicine and public health preparedness
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Disaster Med Public Health Prep · Dec 2015
Identifying Indirect Benefits of Federal Health Care Emergency Preparedness Grant Funding to Coalitions: A Content Analysis.
This study aimed to identify the indirect benefits of health care preparedness funding as perceived by current and former recipients of the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response's Hospital Preparedness Program. ⋯ This study identified indirect benefits of federal investment in hospital and health care preparedness in day-to-day operations. Major categories of these benefits included dual-use technology and programs and impact of relationships on day-to-day operations. Coalition members placed a high value on these benefits, even though they were not direct outcomes of grant programs. Further research is needed to quantify the economic value of these indirect benefits to more accurately measure the total return on investment from federal grant funding.
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Disaster Med Public Health Prep · Oct 2015
ReviewGlobal Health Security Demands a Strong International Health Regulations Treaty and Leadership From a Highly Resourced World Health Organization.
If the Ebola tragedy of West Africa has taught us anything, it should be that the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR) Treaty, which gave unprecedented authority to the World Health Organization (WHO) to provide global public health security during public health emergencies of international concern, has fallen severely short of its original goal. After encouraging successes with the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) pandemic, the intent of the legally binding Treaty to improve the capacity of all countries to detect, assess, notify, and respond to public health threats has shamefully lapsed. Despite the granting of 2-year extensions in 2012 to countries to meet core surveillance and response requirements, less than 20% of countries have complied. ⋯ The bottom line is that the global community can no longer tolerate an ineffectual and passive international response system. As such, this Treaty has the potential to become one of the most effective treaties for crisis response and risk reduction worldwide. Practitioners and health decision-makers worldwide must break their silence and advocate for a stronger Treaty and a return of WHO authority.
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Disaster Med Public Health Prep · Oct 2015
Is There a Case for Quarantine? Perspectives from SARS to Ebola.
Quarantine has been used for centuries in an effort to prevent the introduction, transmission, and spread of communicable diseases. While backed by legal authority, the public and even the health care worker community's understanding of the term is murky at best and scientific evidence to support the use of quarantine is frequently lacking. ⋯ This article explains quarantine terminology and then uses a case study from Taiwan during the 2002-2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak to illustrate the key principles associated with quarantine measures taken during the 2014 Ebola outbreak and the potential hazards that can arise from quarantines. Finally, we provide a quarantine and isolation decision tree to assist policy makers and public health officials in applying medically defensible, outcomes-based data and legal authorities to optimize management of emerging infectious diseases.
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Disaster Med Public Health Prep · Oct 2015
Academic Institutions' Critical Guidelines for Health Care Workers Who Deploy to West Africa for the Ebola Response and Future Crises.
The unprecedented Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak in West Africa, with its first cases documented in March 2014, has claimed the lives of thousands of people, and it has devastated the health care infrastructure and workforce in affected countries. Throughout this outbreak, there has been a critical lack of health care workers (HCW), including physicians, nurses, and other essential non-clinical staff, who have been needed, in most of the affected countries, to support the medical response to EVD, to attend to the health care needs of the population overall, and to be trained effectively in infection protection and control. This lack of sufficient and qualified HCW is due in large part to three factors: 1) limited HCW staff prior to the outbreak, 2) disproportionate illness and death among HCWs caused by EVD directly, and 3) valid concerns about personal safety among international HCWs who are considering responding to the affected areas. These guidelines are meant to inform institutions who deploy professional HCWs.