Communicable Disease: Influenza Research
The Notion of Communicable Disease
There are generally a lot of diseases, people suffer from, they all have various symptoms, various complications and consequences. Some of them are hereditary, others could be passed from one individual to another. The latest are usually known under the name communicable diseases. Communicable disease is thus defined as a disease, which is spread from one person to another via a number of ways, including for example by breathing in, by contacting with blood, by being bitten or any other way. Usually separate attention is paid to reporting of all the cases of communicable disease, with the aim of further planning of the prevention measures and seizing the control over the situation. Communicable Disease: Influenza Research
Influenza
Concrete states of health are included into the list of communicable diseases and one of the brightest and most well known to all people is influenza or
flu. It is hardly possible to find an individual, who had never had flu in his life and this is the reason, why most individuals perceive it as a usual thing in everyday life. In reality, most of them are missing a lot of information about the complications and possible consequences of this disease and this is the reason, why governments and health care facilities should keep the situation under their strict control. Influenza is defined as “an infectious disease caused by an influenza virus with mild to severe symptoms, including: a high fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle pains, headache, coughing, and feeling tired and such complications as viral pneumonia, secondary bacterial pneumonia, sinus infections, and worsening of previous health problems such as asthma or heart failure” (Nordqvist, 2016, p. 23). Communicable Disease: Influenza Research
The name of this disease comes from the Italian, where it means “influence” and roots from the initial idea about the cause of this disease, which was described as astrological. Later on it was modified along with new scientific research data and meant “influence of cold”.
Taking into consideration those facts that there are several types of viruses and that all of them are easily spread through the air, when a sick person is sneezing or coughing, there are certain measures, which need to be secured in order to avoid pandemics of influenza.
Symptoms
For the first time the symptoms of influenza by humans were in detail presented by Hippocrates around 2.400 years ago already. This disease is most luckily to have spread from Europe to America during the process of colonization. A lot of indigenous people died from en epidemic of influenza in 1493. Historically there were several severe outbreaks of the disease, for example in Spain in 1918, when millions of people died. Thus specialists in the modern world insist upon vaccination and other simple preventive measures. According to the World Health Organization the influenza vaccine is important for certain categories of people, elderly and children, also those, who have chronic illnesses. “Evidence supports a lower rate of influenza-like illness in many groups who are immunocompromised such as those with: HIV/AIDS, cancer, and post organ transplant. In those at high risk immunization may reduce the risk of heart disease.[101] Whether immunizing health care workers affects patient outcomes is controversial with some reviews finding insufficient evidence and others finding tentative evidence.” (Nordqvist, 2016, p 38). Communicable Disease: Influenza Research
Meaningful Conditions for Influenza
Influenza is considered to be one of the global health problems, especially during the periods of its seasonal outbreaks and in cases of mutations of the viruses. Then it becomes the cause of multiple mortality cases, mostly because of severe complications. A lot of research and studies have been done in order to study the factors, which might have impact upon development and spread of the disease, including environment and genetic ones. Still there is enough space for further research. Special attention was paid towards researching of the environmental factors, which could be considered related to the influenza virus sensitivity. Mouse models of the flu virus led to the recognition of some contestant’s sensitivity genetics, even though the majority of them were never proven in the studies of human cohort (Neighbors, 2013, p. 16). Additional research proved that there are the so-called preexisting conditions, which are able to make the situation with flu virus much more serious, they are cigarette smoke abuse of alcohol. However in order to make this research complete it is necessary to get more human-based evidence.
Certainly influenza conditions are meaningful for individual’s lifestyle. In order to improve the situation the community public health care office would have to secure involvement of the necessary resources, which would contribute to reduction of the flue spreading and inform people in time about the dangers and measures, which need to be taken.Communicable Disease: Influenza Research Depending on how timely and accurate this information is, the better would be control over the situation. Often people are convinced that they are young and strong and they do not need to worry about such disease as influenza and even continue going to work. In reality this is rather dangerous, as first of all they contribute to further spreading of the disease and secondly they make themselves vulnerable to potential complications, which they might not even be aware of. In fact those rules, which need to be learnt, remembered and fulfilled are rather simple: people should get vaccinated in time, they should not forget about washing their hands, they should cover their faces in case they start sneezing or coughing, if they start feeling not well and assume that these are the flue symptoms, then they should better stay at home in order to avoid further spreading of influenza. There were special studies of the necessary protective behaviors done, unfortunately they are dependant upon the socioeconomic status of individuals to a great extent. For example in poorer communities people often are not aware of all the potential risks and their behaviors, thus they would be inclined to ignore the measures for protecting themselves and others around them. In order to improve the situation in such communities, first of all it is necessary to research the cultural and economic aspects of their modes of living in order to be later able to impact their consciousness.
Such environmental factors as humidity, temperature, airflow and precipitation could be defining the transmition and spread of flu virus. At the moment it is not clear yet, whether meteorological determinants are more important, than geographic regions or there are simply differences in investigation and research activities and methods applied.
It is important to note here that influenza could be spread also via health care providers, residents, visitors, etc. Thus there are also the ways of preventing such transmission worked out, which include vaccinations, testing, infection control, antiviral treatment. “Furthermore, giving logical statistics based on public health choices about implementing interventions, and significant advance of methodical evaluations identifying spaces where data is either missing are have insignificant value. While summarizing, some lingering questions for each intervention did arise due to the gaps in research.” (Nordqvist, 2016, p.3). Communicable Disease: Influenza Research The Task Force on Community Preventive Services (Task Force) adopted some qualitative methods in order to be able to present evaluation of the evidence, related to the current effectiveness of vaccine coverage with the aim of improving it. “The Task Force team developed qualitative methods attempting to transcribe the multicomponent body of evidence on effectiveness into recommendations from the Force. There were 35 investigations which were suitable for the presence in the reviews of effectiveness. A dozen investigations were compared for the effectiveness of any intervention when implemented alone” (Ndiaye, 2005, p. 8). The Task Force could be used for taking decisions upon making judgments about the available evidence and effectiveness of the current intervention measures. There is a special menu with a long enough list of intervention options, which could be used on the basis of the consideration of local conditions. There are options developed, which could allow transformation of the research date and conclusions into concrete recommendations, as there is often a gap between the actual available data and the kinds of activities and recommendation, which should be applied there immediately.
Public Health Promotion
Public health promotion efforts are rather versatile. People, working in labs, produce powerful vaccines in order to cope with influenza virus, the National Vaccine Program Office is responsible for organization of the cooperation between such structures as federal agencies, which deal with immunization activities and vaccine procedures. Taking into consideration that flu is the 7th among various death causes, the public health researchers are to put their maximum efforts into preventing measures and their effectiveness. The plan for improving the vaccine assurance amongst the United States population involve the objectives to increase the influenza to 60% vaccine insurance wages amongst adults which are considered to be high risk (Ndiaye, 2005, p. 29). The objective for the targeted vaccine is priority for the National Immunization Program (NIP) for the CDC (Ndiaye, 2005, p. 30). Communicable Disease: Influenza Research
Conclusion
Overall, influenza belongs to the list of the communicable diseases and in fact is rather dangerous for all people. It is spread all over the globe and might vary, depending upon local and geographical peculiarities. The most vulnerable societies are those with low economic status, because they hardly have the proper access to information as well as to the needed facilities. This is the reason, why so much attention is paid by public health care services towards researching and improvement of preventive measures, such as personal hygiene and vaccination.Communicable Disease: Influenza Research