scholarly journals Ten commonly asked questions about Covid-19 and lessons learned from Thailand

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pramon Viwattanakulvanid

PurposeAs the world faces a new health crisis threatening people with the spread of Covid-19, this study aims to summarize the key information of Covid-19 related to disease characteristics, diagnosis, treatment and prevention along with the lessons learned from Thailand.Design/methodology/approachThe narrative review was synthesized from various sources such as the World Health Organization; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Ministry of Public Health and other related news; articles in ScienceDirect, PubMed, Google Scholar; and the author's perspective regarding the lessons learned from Thailand with keywords of “Covid-19” and “Coronavirus” from January to August 2020. Google Trends was used to set common questions.FindingsCovid-19 is the seventh family of coronaviruses that cause various symptoms related to respiratory systems. The disease can be treated through general and symptomatic treatment, by using antiviral drugs. As of July 2020, there are four potential vaccine candidates ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, mRNA-1273, Ad5-nCOV and BNT162b1. The recommendations for Covid-19 prevention are physical distancing, face masks, eye protection and hand washing. Thailand is now considered as low-risk for Covid-19 possibly because of (1) soft policy by government actions, (2) village health volunteers, (3) integration of technology and (4) fact-based communications.Originality/valueThis study summarized the key points about Covid-19, clarified some misunderstandings and shared strategic actions from Thailand, which can be adapted according to the different capacities and situations in other countries.

2020 ◽  

In the past 100 years, the world has faced four distinctly different pandemics: the Spanish flu of 1918-1919, the SARS pandemic of 2003, the H1N1 or “swine flu” pandemic of 2012, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Each public health crisis exposed specific systemic shortfalls and provided public health lessons for future events. The Spanish flu revealed a nursing shortage and led to a great appreciation of nursing as a profession. SARS showed the importance of having frontline clinicians be able to work with regulators and those producing guidelines. H1N1 raised questions about the nature of a global organization such as the World Health Organization in terms of the benefits and potential disadvantages of leading the fight against a long-term global public health threat. In the era of COVID-19, it seems apparent that we are learning about both the blessing and curse of social media.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abhiman Cheeyandira

Abstract Corona virus pandemic has affected all the 50 states in the USA. States such as NY, CA and WA being the most affected. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website, as of 28 March 2020, the total number of cases in the USA is over 103 300 and number of deaths to 1668. In the coming weeks, COVID-19 rates are expected to begin skyrocketing and hit a peak in late April/May/June given lessons learned from China, Italy and others. COVID-19 has been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) as confirmed cases approach 575 444 patients with 26 654 deaths across over 160 countries, as of 28 March 2020. There is a lot of impact on management of the urgent and emergent cases. This article highlights the changes that are being made in delivering urgent and emergent surgical care during the pandemic.


2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olha Bobrykovych

Obesity has become one of the most urgent social problems worldwide. Continuous and rapid increase in obesity rates is considered by the World Health Organization as a global epidemic. Obesity affects children as well; the World Health Organization recognized childhood obesity as an acute public health crisis. Childhood obesity is often accompanied by arterial hypertension, hyperlipidemia and disorders of        carbohydrate metabolism resulting in symptom complex – metabolic syndrome. While teaching the problems of metabolic syndrome in children to interns, a significant attention is paid to risk factors, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of syndrome. Such approach will allow future pediatricians to diagnose and prevent the development of early complications of metabolic syndrome in children timely.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (11) ◽  
pp. e0009962
Author(s):  
Angelia M. Sanders ◽  
Ruth Dixon ◽  
Logan Stuck ◽  
Michaela Kelly ◽  
Geordie Woods ◽  
...  

The World Health Organization promotes the SAFE (Surgery, Antibiotics, Facial cleanliness, and Environmental improvements) strategy for trachoma control and prevention. The F&E components of the strategy focus on promotion of healthy hygiene and sanitation behaviors. In order to monitor F&E activities implemented across villages and schools in Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda, an F&E Monitoring and Evaluation (FEME) framework was developed to track quarterly program outputs and to provide the basis for a pre and post evaluation of the activities. Results showed an increase in knowledge at the school and household levels, and in some cases, an increase in presence of hand/face washing stations. However, this did not always result in a change in trachoma prevention behaviors such as facial cleanliness or keeping compounds free of human feces. The results highlight that the F&E programs were effective in increasing awareness of trachoma prevention but not able to translate that knowledge into changes in behavior during the time between pre and post-surveys. This study also indicates the potential to improve the data collection and survey design and notes that the period of intervention was not long enough to measure significant changes.


Author(s):  
Pooja Sharma ◽  
Karan Veer

: It was 11 March 2020 when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the name COVID-19 for coronavirus disease and also described it as a pandemic. Till that day 118,000 cases were confirmed of pneumonia with breathing problem throughout the world. At the start of New Year when COVID-19 came into knowledge a few days later, the gene sequencing of the virus was revealed. Today the number of confirmed cases is scary, i.e. 9,472,473 in the whole world and 484,236 deaths have been recorded by WHO till 26 June 2020. WHO's global risk assessment is very high [1]. The report is enlightening the lessons learned by India from the highly affected countries.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nafisa Qibriya Khan ◽  
A. H. Farooqui ◽  
Syed Ayesha Fatima ◽  
Jalil Ahmad ◽  
Tausif S. Khan

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a pandemic disease of modern time with unique and rapid transmission rate and affected almost all the nations without respecting any border. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is arguably the biggest health crisis the world has faced in 21st century. It is an infectious disease and declared pandemic by the World Health Organization. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, which originated in Wuhan, China, has now spread to 192 countries and administrative regions infecting nearly 800,000 individuals of all ages as of 31 March 2020. Though most infected individuals exhibit mild symptoms including fever, upper respiratory tract symptoms, shortness of breath, and diarrhoea, or are asymptomatic altogether, severe cases of infection can lead to pneumonia, multiple organ failure, and death. Globally, at least 7900 deaths have been directly attributed to COVID19, and this number is expected to rise with the ongoing epidemic. This is particularly crucial as the current outbreak involves a new pathogen (SARS-CoV-2), on which limited knowledge exists of its infectivity and clinical profile. Research is in progress on therapeutic efficacy of various agents including anti-malarials (Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine), antiviral drugs, and convalescent serum of recovered patients. Unani system of medicine is one of the traditional systems of medicine which is being explored for providing preventive, supportive and rehabilitative care to patients. Unani system of medicine has a detailed description of drugs that are utilized in many infectious diseases, including respiratory infections. Immune response is essential to eliminate virus and to preclude disease progression to severe stages. Therefore, it is important to summarize the evidence regarding the preventive measures, control options such as immune-stimulator and prophylactic treatment in Unani medicine against Covid19. This review summarizes various pharmacological actions of Unani formulation Tiryaq-e-Arba in Unani literature and various reported pharmacological activities which can possibly provide prevention, control and reduction of complications of this deadly disease.


Author(s):  
Ken Hyland ◽  
Feng (Kevin) Jiang

Abstract Covid-19, the greatest global health crisis for a century, brought a new immediacy and urgency to international bio-medical research. The pandemic generated intense competition to produce a vaccine and contain the virus, creating what the World Health Organization referred to as an ‘infodemic’ of published output. In this frantic atmosphere, researchers were keen to get their research noticed. In this paper, we explore whether this enthusiasm influenced the rhetorical presentation of research and encouraged scientists to “sell” their studies. Examining a corpus of the most highly cited SCI articles on the virus published in the first seven months of 2020, we explore authors’ use of hyperbolic and promotional language to boost aspects of their research. Our results show a significant increase in hype to stress certainty, contribution, novelty and potential, especially regarding research methods, outcomes and primacy. Our study sheds light on scientific persuasion at a time of intense social anxiety.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-17
Author(s):  
Mirza Ghulamudin Ghulamudin ◽  
Maufur ◽  
Beni Habibi

Covid-19 has now attacked Indonesia, where the spread of the disease is very fast. Not only in Indonesia, but all corners of the world are currently experiencing a health crisis. In the beginning, the spread of Covid-19 had an impact on economic activity which began to sluggish. This also has an impact on the education system in Indonesia. Until several countries decided to close schools and universities. In an effort to prevent the spread of covid-19, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends temporarily stopping activities that would potentially cause crowds. Even during the outbreak, covid-19 in Indonesia, there were many ways that the government did to prevent its spread through social distancing. Kemendikbud instructed through the Ministry of Education and Culture (Kemendikbud) Directorate of Higher Education Circular No. 1 of 2020 concerning the prevention of the spread of covid-19 in the world of Education to organize distance learning and advise students to learn from their homes. Teachers and students are starting to be required to follow the current situation by using technology as a distance learning medium. One of the media that is being favored by teachers as a learning medium is the Google Classroom application. This application is an application that can make it easier for students and teachers to create effective learning. Given that students today are a generation who are very familiar with the use of technology. The use of technology in learning is an alternative method used by teachers during the Covid-19 Pandemic.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Vilbert

The COVID-19 has renovated the debate about global health governance. A number of scholars have proposed that the World Health Organization should assume the position of a central coordinator with hierarchical powers, demanding nation-states to “share their sovereignty”. This article presents four main objections to this project. First, when international institutions receive leverage, they use to impose “one-size-fits-all” policies, which conflicts with the characteristic heterogeny across countries. Second, geopolitical questions and the distribution of power in multilateral institutions put developing countries in a position of vulnerability within a hierarchical order. Third, the risk of crowding out parallel initiatives, especially from non-state actors. Fourth, decisions about health can have a major impact on countries, which may thwart the internal democratic principle. A Pareto improvement would be possible by strengthening the WHO’s operational capacity and its ability to issue technical guidance and coordinate with countries. To test this hypothesis, this study analyses the possible influence of the WHO’s guidance in the first year of the coronavirus health crisis, from January 2020 to January 2021, in 37 countries reported in the World Values Survey Wave 7 (2017-2020). The OLS regression performed shows a statistically significant negative relationship between the trust in the WHO, assumed as a proxy for the level of the organization's penetration, and the number of cases of COVID-19 (per million people) in the countries of the sample. These findings reinforce the hypothesis that there is a valid case for the countries to strengthen the WHO’s mandate post-COVID-19, but they should enhance the operations of provision of reliable information and support. Nation-states, in particular the developing ones, should eschew the temptation to create a hierarchical global health structure, which may not only fail due to countries’ asymmetries but is likely to create losers in the process.


2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeannette Guarner

ABSTRACTBuruli ulcer is caused byMycobacterium ulcerans. This neglected disease occurs in scattered foci around the world, with a higher concentration of cases in West Africa. The mycobacteria produce mycolactones that cause tissue necrosis. The disease presents as a painless skin nodule that ulcerates as necrosis expands. Finding acid-fast bacilli in smears or histopathology, culturing the mycobacteria, and performingM. ulceransPCR in presumptive cases confirm the diagnosis. Medical treatment with oral rifampin and intramuscular streptomycin or oral treatment with rifampin plus clarithromycin for 8 weeks is supported by the World Health Organization. This review summarizes the epidemiology, pathogenesis, clinical presentation, diagnostic tests, and advances in treatment.


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