scholarly journals Detecting Emerging Infectious Diseases: An Overview of the Laboratory Response Network for Biological Threats

2019 ◽  
Vol 134 (2_suppl) ◽  
pp. 16S-21S ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Villanueva ◽  
Beth Schweitzer ◽  
Marcella Odle ◽  
Tricia Aden
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Emerging Infectious Diseases ◽  
Data Entry ◽  
Disease Outbreak ◽  
Infectious Disease Outbreak ◽  
Public Health Emergencies ◽  
Response Network ◽  
Biosecurity Practices

The Laboratory Response Network (LRN) was established in 1999 to ensure an effective laboratory response to high-priority public health threats. The LRN for biological threats (LRN-B) provides a laboratory infrastructure to respond to emerging infectious diseases. Since 2012, the LRN-B has been involved in 3 emerging infectious disease outbreak responses. We evaluated the LRN-B role in these responses and identified areas for improvement. LRN-B laboratories tested 1097 specimens during the 2014 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus outbreak, 180 specimens during the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak, and 92 686 specimens during the 2016-2017 Zika virus outbreak. During the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak, the LRN-B uncovered important gaps in biosafety and biosecurity practices. During the 2016-2017 Zika outbreak, the LRN-B identified the data entry bottleneck as a hindrance to timely reporting of results. Addressing areas for improvement may help LRN-B reference laboratories improve the response to future public health emergencies.

scholarly journals Infectious disease outbreak prediction using media articles with machine learning models

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Juhyeon Kim ◽  
Insung Ahn
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Human Health ◽  
Emerging Infectious Diseases ◽  
Disease Outbreak ◽  
Emerging Infectious Disease ◽  
Health Conditions ◽  
News Article ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Infectious Disease Outbreak

AbstractWhen a newly emerging infectious disease breaks out in a country, it brings critical damage to both human health conditions and the national economy. For this reason, apprehending which disease will newly emerge, and preparing countermeasures for that disease, are required. Many different types of infectious diseases are emerging and threatening global human health conditions. For this reason, the detection of emerging infectious disease pattern is critical. However, as the epidemic spread of infectious disease occurs sporadically and rapidly, it is not easy to predict whether an infectious disease will emerge or not. Furthermore, accumulating data related to a specific infectious disease is not easy. For these reasons, finding useful data and building a prediction model with these data is required. The Internet press releases numerous articles every day that rapidly reflect currently pending issues. Thus, in this research, we accumulated Internet articles from Medisys that were related to infectious disease, to see if news data could be used to predict infectious disease outbreak. Articles related to infectious disease from January to December 2019 were collected. In this study, we evaluated if newly emerging infectious diseases could be detected using the news article data. Support Vector Machine (SVM), Semi-supervised Learning (SSL), and Deep Neural Network (DNN) were used for prediction to examine the use of information embedded in the web articles: and to detect the pattern of emerging infectious disease.

scholarly journals An approach to and web-based tool for infectious disease outbreak intervention analysis

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashlynn R. Daughton ◽  
Nicholas Generous ◽  
Reid Priedhorsky ◽  
Alina Deshpande
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Disease Outbreak ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
Infectious Disease Outbreak ◽  
Web Based ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health Community ◽  
Parameter Ranges

Abstract Infectious diseases are a leading cause of death globally. Decisions surrounding how to control an infectious disease outbreak currently rely on a subjective process involving surveillance and expert opinion. However, there are many situations where neither may be available. Modeling can fill gaps in the decision making process by using available data to provide quantitative estimates of outbreak trajectories. Effective reduction of the spread of infectious diseases can be achieved through collaboration between the modeling community and public health policy community. However, such collaboration is rare, resulting in a lack of models that meet the needs of the public health community. Here we show a Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered (SIR) model modified to include control measures that allows parameter ranges, rather than parameter point estimates, and includes a web user interface for broad adoption. We apply the model to three diseases, measles, norovirus and influenza, to show the feasibility of its use and describe a research agenda to further promote interactions between decision makers and the modeling community.

scholarly journals Emerging viral infectious disease threat: Why Tanzania is not in a safe zone

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chacha D. Mangu ◽  
Christina K. Manyama ◽  
Henry Msila ◽  
Lwitiho Sudi ◽  
Godlove Chaula ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Emerging Infectious Diseases ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Early Response ◽  
Emerging Diseases ◽  
Surveillance Systems ◽  
Viral Infectious Disease ◽  
The Government

Emerging diseases are global threat towards human existence. Every country is exposed to potentially emergence of infectious diseases. Several factor such as changes in ecology, climate and human demographics play different roles in a complex mechanism contributing to the occurrence of infectious diseases. Important aspects towards control in case of outbreaks are surveillance, preparedness and early response. Tanzania should therefore take opportunity of the calm situation currently present, to prepare. Except for HIV/AIDS, Tanzania has not experienced a major public health threat. However, the question is, is the country safe from emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases? In this article we try to explore the danger of emerging infectious disease (EID) epidemics in Tanzania and the risks attached if an outbreak is to occur. The aim is to formulate recommendations to the government, responsible authorities and general population of what can be done to improve the level of EID preparedness in the country. In conclusion, it is important to strengthen the capacity of community and healthcare staffs on how to respond to potential infectious disease outbreaks. Community-based surveillance systems should be incorporated into the national systems for early detection of public health events. It is also critical to enhance one health approach to increase cross-sectoral information sharing, surveillance and interventional strategies as regards to preparedness and response to disease outbreaks.

Examination of Hospital Workers’ Emotional Responses to an Infectious Disease Outbreak: Lessons From the 2015 MERS Co-V Outbreak in South Korea

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (03) ◽  
pp. 504-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heejung Son ◽  
Wang Jun Lee ◽  
Hyun Soo Kim ◽  
Kkot Sil Lee ◽  
Myoungsoon You
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Infectious Disease ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Disease Outbreak ◽  
Hospital Workers ◽  
Infectious Disease Outbreak

ABSTRACTHospital workers are critical for a successful response to an infectious disease outbreak and for preventing disease transmission to the community. Therefore, hospital crisis management should implement efforts to improve hospital workers’ preparedness in responding to public health emergencies caused by infectious diseases. Traditionally, preparedness and skill of hospital workers have been emphasized, but awareness of the importance of the emotional mindset of hospital workers in dealing with disease outbreaks has only recently increased; therefore, empirical approaches to examining emotional responses of hospital workers has been limited. This study analyzed qualitative data of the 2015 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome outbreak in South Korea. In particular, negative emotions and stress experienced by hospital workers who treated patients were characterized, as were the events that triggered such experiences. These events were categorized into four themes (eg,Mistake, Missing, Delay Due to Communication Failure). Identifying events that trigger negative emotions in hospital workers has important implications for hospitals’ management guidance in relation to an infectious disease outbreak. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness.2019;13:504-510)

scholarly journals Reciprocal Trust as an Ethical Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hui Yun Chan
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Disease Outbreak ◽  
Infectious Disease Outbreak ◽  
Ethical Practices ◽  
Considerable Research ◽  
Pandemic Response ◽  
Restrictive Measures ◽  
Ethical Response

AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic has generated a range of responses from countries across the globe in managing and containing infections. Considerable research has highlighted the importance of trust in ethically and effectively managing infectious diseases in the population; however, considerations of reciprocal trust remain limited in debates on pandemic response. This paper aims to broaden the perspective of good ethical practices in managing an infectious disease outbreak by including the role of reciprocal trust. A synthesis of the approaches drawn from South Korea and Taiwan reveals reciprocal trust as an important ethical response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Reciprocal trust offers the opportunity to reconcile the difficulties arising from restrictive measures for protecting population health and individual rights.

scholarly journals The Integrated Rapid Infectious Disease Analysis (IRIDA) Platform

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas C Matthews ◽  
Franklin R Bristow ◽  
Emma J Griffiths ◽  
Aaron Petkau ◽  
Josh Adam ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Data Sharing ◽  
Disease Outbreak ◽  
Infectious Disease Outbreak ◽  
Outbreak Investigations ◽  
User Friendly ◽  
Disease Analysis ◽  
Web Platform

AbstractWhole genome sequencing (WGS) is a powerful tool for public health infectious disease investigations owing to its higher resolution, greater efficiency, and cost-effectiveness over traditional genotyping methods. Implementation of WGS in routine public health microbiology laboratories is impeded by a lack of user-friendly automated and semi-automated pipelines, restrictive jurisdictional data sharing policies, and the proliferation of non-interoperable analytical and reporting systems. To address these issues, we developed the Integrated Rapid Infectious Disease Analysis (IRIDA) platform (irida.ca), a user-friendly, decentralized, open-source bioinformatics and analytical web platform to support real-time infectious disease outbreak investigations using WGS data. Instances can be independently installed on local high-performance computing infrastructure, enabling private and secure data management and analyses according to organizational policies and governance. IRIDA’s data management capabilities enable secure upload, storage and sharing of all WGS data and metadata. The core platform currently includes pipelines for quality control, assembly, annotation, variant detection, phylogenetic analysis, in silico serotyping, multi-locus sequence typing, and genome distance calculation. Analysis pipeline results can be visualized within the platform through dynamic line lists and integrated phylogenomic clustering for research and discovery, and for enhancing decision-making support and hypothesis generation in epidemiological investigations. Communication and data exchange between instances are provided through customizable access controls. IRIDA complements centralized systems, empowering local analytics and visualizations for genomics-based microbial pathogen investigations. IRIDA is currently transforming the Canadian public health ecosystem and is freely available at https://github.com/phac-nml/irida and www.irida.ca.Impact StatementWhole genome sequencing (WGS) is revolutionizing infectious disease analysis and surveillance due to its cost effectiveness, utility, and improved analytical power. To date, no “one-size-fits-all” genomics platform has been universally adopted, owing to differences in national (and regional) health information systems, data sharing policies, computational infrastructures, lack of interoperability and prohibitive costs. The Integrated Rapid Infectious Disease Analysis (IRIDA) platform is a user-friendly, decentralized, open-source bioinformatics and analytical web platform developed to support real-time infectious disease outbreak investigations using WGS data. IRIDA empowers public health, regulatory and clinical microbiology laboratory personnel to better incorporate WGS technology into routine operations by shielding them from the computational and analytical complexities of big data genomics. IRIDA is now routinely used as part of a validated suite of tools to support outbreak investigations in Canada. While IRIDA was designed to serve the needs of the Canadian public health system, it is generally applicable to any public health and multi-jurisdictional environment. IRIDA enables localized analyses but provides mechanisms and standard outputs to enable data sharing. This approach can help overcome pervasive challenges in real-time global infectious disease surveillance, investigation and control, resulting in faster responses, and ultimately, better public health outcomes.DATA SUMMARYData used to generate some of the figures in this manuscript can be found in the NCBI BioProject PRJNA305824.

scholarly journals DBatVir: the database of bat-associated viruses

Database ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lihong Chen ◽  
Bo Liu ◽  
Jian Yang ◽  
Qi Jin
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Emerging Infectious Diseases ◽  
Emerging Infectious Disease ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Zoonotic Viruses ◽  
User Friendly ◽  
Reservoir Hosts ◽  
Viral Sequences

Abstract Emerging infectious diseases remain a significant threat to public health. Most emerging infectious disease agents in humans are of zoonotic origin. Bats are important reservoir hosts of many highly lethal zoonotic viruses and have been implicated in numerous emerging infectious disease events in recent years. It is essential to enhance our knowledge and understanding of the genetic diversity of the bat-associated viruses to prevent future outbreaks. To facilitate further research, we constructed the database of bat-associated viruses (DBatVir). Known viral sequences detected in bat samples were manually collected and curated, along with the related metadata, such as the sampling time, location, bat species and specimen type. Additional information concerning the bats, including common names, diet type, geographic distribution and phylogeny were integrated into the database to bridge the gap between virologists and zoologists. The database currently covers >4100 bat-associated animal viruses of 23 viral families detected from 196 bat species in 69 countries worldwide. It provides an overview and snapshot of the current research regarding bat-associated viruses, which is essential now that the field is rapidly expanding. With a user-friendly interface and integrated online bioinformatics tools, DBatVir provides a convenient and powerful platform for virologists and zoologists to analyze the virome diversity of bats, as well as for epidemiologists and public health researchers to monitor and track current and future bat-related infectious diseases. Database URL: http://www.mgc.ac.cn/DBatVir/

scholarly journals Uganda Mountain Community Health System—Perspectives and Capacities towards Emerging Infectious Disease Surveillance

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (16) ◽  
pp. 8562
Author(s):  
Aggrey Siya ◽  
Richardson Mafigiri ◽  
Richard Migisha ◽  
Rebekah C. Kading
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Disease Surveillance ◽  
Emerging Infectious Diseases ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Disease Response ◽  
Mount Elgon ◽  
Public Health Hazards

In mountain communities like Sebei, Uganda, which are highly vulnerable to emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, community-based surveillance plays an important role in the monitoring of public health hazards. In this survey, we explored capacities of village health teams (VHTs) in Sebei communities of Mount Elgon in undertaking surveillance tasks for emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases in the context of a changing climate. We used participatory epidemiology techniques to elucidate VHTs’ perceptions on climate change and public health and assessed their capacities to conduct surveillance for emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. Overall, VHTs perceived climate change to be occurring with wider impacts on public health. However, they had inadequate capacities in collecting surveillance data. The VHTs lacked transport to navigate through their communities and had insufficient capacities in using mobile phones for sending alerts. They did not engage in reporting other hazards related to the environment, wildlife, and domestic livestock that would accelerate infectious disease outbreaks. Records were not maintained for disease surveillance activities and the abilities of VHTs to analyze data were also limited. However, VHTs had access to platforms that could enable them to disseminate public health information. The VHTs thus need to be retooled to conduct their work effectively and efficiently through equipping them with adequate logistics and knowledge on collecting, storing, analyzing, and relaying data, which will improve infectious disease response and mitigation efforts.

Biosecurity and Public Health Ethics Issues Raised by Biological Threats

2019 ◽  
pp. 773-785
Author(s):  
Nicholas Evans ◽  
Thomas Inglesby
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Resource Allocation ◽  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Emerging Infectious Diseases ◽  
Biological Weapon ◽  
Ethical Values ◽  
Dual Use ◽  
Health Concerns ◽  
Trade Offs

This chapter introduces ethical issues that arise in the context of biosecurity: policies and actions intended to prevent the development or emergence, or mitigate the consequences, of serious biological threats. These threats could include deliberate biological weapon attacks (bioterrorism), pandemics, emerging infectious diseases, or major laboratory accidents. The basic values that underpin these public health concerns are first introduced. Ethical issues that arise before, during, and following a biosecurity crisis are then examined, including issues of resource allocation, dual-use research, and the possibility of quarantine. Their resolution requires trade-offs among different ethical values, including utility, fairness, and liberty.

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