scholarly journals Environmental drivers of Ross River virus in southeastern Tasmania, Australia: towards strengthening public health interventions

2011 ◽  
Vol 140 (2) ◽  
pp. 359-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. K. WERNER ◽  
S. GOATER ◽  
S. CARVER ◽  
G. ROBERTSON ◽  
G. R. ALLEN ◽  
...  

SUMMARYIn Australia, Ross River virus (RRV) is predominantly identified and managed through passive health surveillance. Here, the proactive use of environmental datasets to improve community-scale public health interventions in southeastern Tasmania is explored. Known environmental drivers (temperature, rainfall, tide) of the RRV vector Aedes camptorhynchus are analysed against cumulative case records for five adjacent local government areas (LGAs) from 1993 to 2009. Allowing for a 0- to 3-month lag period, temperature was the most significant driver of RRV cases at 1-month lag, contributing to a 23·2% increase in cases above the long-term case average. The potential for RRV to become an emerging public health issue in Tasmania due to projected climate changes is discussed. Moreover, practical outputs from this research are proposed including the development of an early warning system for local councils to implement preventative measures, such as public outreach and mosquito spray programmes.

2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Werner ◽  
Sarah Goater ◽  
Scott Carver ◽  
Greg Robertson ◽  
Geoff Allen ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas P. Smith ◽  
Ilaria Dorigatti ◽  
Swapnil Mishra ◽  
Erik Volz ◽  
Patrick G. T. Walker ◽  
...  

AbstractPrevious work has shown that environment affects SARS-CoV-2 transmission, but it is unclear whether emerging strains show similar responses. Here we show that lineage B.1.1.7 spread with greater transmission in colder and more densely populated parts of England. We also find evidence of B.1.1.7’s transmission advantage at warmer temperatures versus other strains, implying that spring conditions may facilitate B.1.1.7’s invasion in Europe and across the Northern hemisphere, undermining the effectiveness of public health interventions.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shamoon Noushad ◽  
Shershah Syed ◽  
Sadaf Ahmed

Aims: To explore the impact of obstetric fistula in the county and to propose effective public health interventions that can help to prevent the condition with a long-term goal of eradicating the condition. Methods: The survey and analysis included secondary data addressing women's experiences of fistula; dynamics and limitationsdetermining women's access to in healthcare facilities for fistula management; and restraintsof health professional as well as health inequities. Results: It was assessed that recently, many hospitals and organizations in the country go on board on intercessions to address the impact of the illness, however, much importance is on pinpointing and discussing the existing cases rather than focusing on public health interventions that can help to prevent and eventually eradicate the condition in Pakistan.


Author(s):  
Andreas Handel ◽  
Joel C. Miller ◽  
Yang Ge ◽  
Isaac Chun-Hai Fung

As COVID-19 continues to spread, public health interventions are crucial to minimize its impact. The most desirable goal is to drive the pathogen quickly to extinction. This generally involves applying interventions as strongly as possible, which worked for SARS, but so far has failed for COVID-19. If fast eradication is not achievable, the next best goal is to delay the spread and minimize cases and burden on the health care system until suitable drugs or vaccines are available. This suppression approach also calls for strong interventions, potentially applied for a long time.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-105
Author(s):  
Iwona A. Bielska ◽  
Lauren Jewett ◽  
Mark Embrett ◽  
Richard Buote ◽  
Derek R. Manis ◽  
...  

In late January 2020, the first COVID-19 case was reported in Canada. By March 5, 2020, community spread of the virus was identified and by May 26, 2020, close to 86,000 patients had COVID-19 and 6,566 had died. As COVID-19 cases increased, provincial and territorial governments announced states of public health emergency between March 13 and 20, 2020. This paper examines Canada’s public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic during the first four months (January to May 2020) by overviewing the actions undertaken by the federal (national) and regional (provincial/territorial) governments. Canada’s jurisdictional public health structures, public health responses, technological and research endeavours, and public opinion on the pandemic measures are described. As the pandemic unravelled, the federal and provincial/territorial governments unrolled a series of stringent public health interventions and restrictions, including physical distancing and gathering size restrictions; closures of borders, schools, and non-essential businesses and services; cancellations of non-essential medical services; and limitations on visitors in hospital and long-term care facilities. In late May 2020, there was a gradual decrease in the daily numbers of new COVID-19 cases seen across most jurisdictions, which has led the provinces and territories to prepare phased re-opening. Overall, the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada and the substantial amount of formative health and policy-related data being created provide an insight on how to improve responses and better prepare for future health emergencies.


Author(s):  
Simon Chapman ◽  
Becky Freeman

Many public health interventions are controversial or potentially controversial. The way the media handle such issues can strongly influence public and policy-maker attitudes towards them, and effective media advocacy can be a powerful way of taking forward public health initiatives. After reading this chapter, you should have a better understanding of: how the media deal with public health issues; how the framing of an issue influences whether and how it leads to changes in policy; what you can do when a public health issue is framed in an adverse or harmful way.


2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 64-66
Author(s):  
Esther Tong ◽  
Tom Kosatsky

As more provinces and territories consider requiring the reporting to public health of clinical blood lead analyses, it is clear that public health inspectors (PHIs) have an important role to play in investigating higher-level results. The familiarity of PHIs with interviewing, inspections, and environmental sampling allows for the extension of their skills and knowledge to support effective investigations and public health interventions on behavioural and environmental sources of lead exposure. Here we review the steps involved in investigating higher-level blood lead reports and the roles and limits of PHI involvement in those investigations.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David V McLeod ◽  
Sylvain Gandon

Pathogen adaptation to public health interventions, such as vaccination, may take tortuous routes and involve a multitude of genetic mutations acting on distinct phenotypic traits. For example, pathogens can escape the vaccine-induced immune response, or adjust their virulence so as to increase transmission in vaccinated hosts. Despite its importance for public health and vaccine efficacy, how these two adaptations jointly evolve is poorly understood. Taking a trait-centered, rather than variant-centered perspective, here we elucidate the role played by epistasis and recombination, with an emphasis on the different protective effects of vaccination. Vaccines reducing transmission and/or increasing clearance generate positive epistasis between the vaccine-escape and virulence alleles, favouring strains that carry both mutations. Vaccines reducing virulence mortality generate negative epistasis, favouring strains that carry either mutation, but not both. If epistasis is positive, recombination can lead to the sequential fixation of the two mutations and prevent the transient build-up of more virulent escape strains. If epistasis is negative, recombination between loci can create an evolutionary bistability between alternative routes of adaptation, such that whichever adaptation is more accessible tends to be favoured in the long-term. More generally, our model provides a valuable framework for studying pathogen adaptation from a trait-centered view, shifting the focus away from variants.


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