Public Health Risk Environment for Bulgarian SMEs (Guest Houses and Family Hotels) in the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 77-102
Author(s):  
Teodora Kiryakova-Dineva ◽  
Ruska Bozhkova
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Health Risk ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Risk Environment ◽  
The South ◽  
Public Health Risk ◽  
The Public ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
The World

At a time of the global health pandemic, the most affected areas are economy and social life. Along with the practical limitations of travel, regarding personal security reasons and the objective risks for the environment, the world of tourism has changed. However, under the circumstances, some small accommodation units have managed to survive, like the Seamen between Scylla and Charybdis – the mythical situation. The purpose of this chapter is to delve into the public health risk environment for Bulgarian SMEs in tourism (guest houses and family hotels) during the COVID-19 pandemic. The extent of the analysis includes hotels and guest houses in the south-western part of Bulgaria that managed to keep operating despite the global pandemic situation.

Assessing public health risk factors for internally displaced households in North Darfur, Sudan

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elfadil Mohammed Mahmoud ◽  
Indraijt Pal ◽  
Mokbul Morshed Ahmad
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Risk Factors ◽  
Health Risk ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Health Risk Factors ◽  
Public Health Risk ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Household Level ◽  
The Public

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to assess the public health risk factors of internally displaced households and suggest appropriate measures and strategies for health risk reduction in the context of IDPs.Design/methodology/approachThe composite Index (CI) method was used to compare the public health risk factors at the household level in three IDP camps. A set of 22 indicators were studied in 326 households. Households were selected by using a two-stage cluster sampling technique.FindingsThe findings indicate that the Shangil Tobaya camp is at the highest risk for communicable diseases (63.6%) followed by Zamzam (52.4%) and Abu Shouk (42.7%) at the household level. Eight indicators appeared to have made differential impacts between Abu Shouk and Shangil Tobaya, these include: level of education, walking time to health facilities, water source, latrines type, safe disposal of child feces, frequency of visit by pregnant women to antenatal care services, place of delivery and women delivering their children with the help of skilled birth attendants.Research limitations/implicationsSince the selection criteria of the camps were predefined; there are variations in the number of samples between the camps. Therefore, the generalizability may be compromised.Social implicationsIncreased access to healthcare services particularly reproductive health services to the most vulnerable groups (women). Community involvement in services management to promote ownership.Originality/valueThe methods used in this study is original and flexible and can be replicated for other emergency areas and risks.

scholarly journals Sheep May Not Be an Important Zoonotic Reservoir for Cryptosporidium and Giardia Parasites

2005 ◽  
Vol 71 (9) ◽  
pp. 4992-4997 ◽  
Author(s):  
Una M. Ryan ◽  
Caroline Bath ◽  
Ian Robertson ◽  
Carolyn Read ◽  
Aileen Elliot ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Risk ◽  
Western Australia ◽  
Cryptosporidium Hominis ◽  
Fecal Samples ◽  
Public Health Risk ◽  
The Public ◽  
Catchment Areas

ABSTRACT Little is known of the prevalence of Cryptosporidium and Giardia parasites in sheep and the genotypes that they harbor, although potentially sheep may contribute significantly to contamination of watersheds. In the present study, conducted in Western Australia, a total of 1,647 sheep fecal samples were screened for the presence of Cryptosporidium and Giardia spp. using microscopy, and a subset (n = 500) were screened by PCR and genotyped. Analysis revealed that although both parasites were detected in a high proportion of samples by PCR (44% and 26% for Giardia and Cryptosporidium spp., respectively), with the exception of one Cryptosporidium hominis isolate, the majority of isolates genotyped are not commonly found in humans. These results suggest that the public health risk of sheep-derived Cryptosporidium and Giardia spp. in catchment areas and effluent may be overestimated and warrant further investigation.

Hazardous Waste: Evolution of a National Environmental Problem

2004 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 306-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Travis Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Risk ◽  
Hazardous Waste ◽  
Environmental Problem ◽  
Public Health Risk ◽  
The Public ◽  
National Environmental

The evolution of hazardous waste into a national environmental problem is a puzzling phenomenon. The public and media perceive hazardous waste to be a major environmental and public health risk. Yet, although the problem of hazardous waste and its resultant contamination has long been known, no one took it seriously until about 1978. An interesting question is, Why did the public and media ignore hazardous waste for so long, particularly during a period of unprecedented public and media interest in the environment, especially pollution, in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s?

scholarly journals Metagenomic characterization of creek sediment microbial communities from a major agricultural region in Salinas, California

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brittany J. Suttner ◽  
Eric R. Johnston ◽  
Luis H. Orellana ◽  
Luis M. Rodriguez-R ◽  
Janet K. Hatt ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Antibiotic Resistance ◽  
Health Risk ◽  
Microbial Communities ◽  
Resistance Genes ◽  
Antibiotic Resistance Genes ◽  
Agricultural Runoff ◽  
Public Health Risk ◽  
The Public ◽  
E Coli

ABSTRACTLittle is known about the public health risks associated with natural creek sediments that are affected by runoff and fecal pollution from agricultural and livestock practices. For instance, the persistence of foodborne pathogens originating from agricultural activities such as Shiga Toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) in such sediments remains poorly quantified. Towards closing these knowledge gaps, the water-sediment interface of two creeks in the Salinas River Valley was sampled over a nine-month period using metagenomics and traditional culture-based tests for STEC. Our results revealed that these sediment communities are extremely diverse and comparable to the functional and taxonomic diversity observed in soils. With our sequencing effort (~4 Gbp per library), we were unable to detect any pathogenic Escherichia coli in the metagenomes of 11 samples that had tested positive using culture-based methods, apparently due to relatively low pathogen abundance. Further, no significant differences were detected in the abundance of human- or cow-specific gut microbiome sequences compared to upstream, more pristine (control) sites, indicating natural dilution of anthropogenic inputs. Notably, a high baseline level of metagenomic reads encoding antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) was found in all samples and was significantly higher compared to ARG reads in metagenomes from other environments, suggesting that these communities may be natural reservoirs of ARGs. Overall, our metagenomic results revealed that creek sediments are not a major sink for anthropogenic runoff and the public health risk associated with these sediment microbial communities may be low.IMPORTANCECurrent agricultural and livestock practices contribute to fecal contamination in the environment and the spread of food and water-borne disease and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Traditionally, the level of pollution and risk to public health is assessed by culture-based tests for the intestinal bacterium, E. coli. However, the accuracy of these traditional methods (e.g., low quantification, and false positive signal when PCR-based) and their suitability for sediments remains unclear. We collected sediments for a time series metagenomics study from one of the most highly productive agricultural regions in the U.S. in order to assess how agricultural runoff affects the native microbial communities and if the presence of STEC in sediment samples can be detected directly by sequencing. Our study provided important information on the potential for using metagenomics as a tool for assessment of public health risk in natural environments.

scholarly journals Risky business: COVAX and the financialization of global vaccine equity

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Stein
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Health Risk ◽  
Financial Risk ◽  
Vaccine Development ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Public Access ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Public Health Risk ◽  
Goods And Services

Abstract Background During the first year and a half of the COVID-19 pandemic, COVAX has been the world’s most prominent effort to ensure equitable access to SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. Launched as part of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (Act-A) in June 2020, COVAX suggested to serve as a vaccine buyers’ and distribution club for countries around the world. It also aimed to support the pharmaceutical industry in speeding up and broadening vaccine development. While COVAX has recently come under critique for failing to bring about global vaccine equity, influential politicians and public health advocates insist that future iterations of it will improve pandemic preparedness. So far COVAX’s role in the ongoing financialization of global health, i.e. in the rise of financial concepts, motives, practices and institutions has not been analyzed. Methods This article describes and critically assesses COVAX’s financial logics, i.e. the concepts, arguments and financing flows on which COVAX relies. It is based on a review of over 109 COVAX related reports, ten in-depth interviews with global health experts working either in or with COVAX, as well as participant observation in 18 webinars and online meetings concerned with global pandemic financing, between September 2020 and August 2021. Results The article finds that COVAX expands the scale and scope of financial instruments in global health governance, and that this is done by conflating different understandings of risk. Specifically, COVAX conflates public health risk and corporate financial risk, leading it to privilege concerns of pharmaceutical companies over those of most participating countries – especially low and lower-middle income countries (LICs and LMICs). COVAX thus drives the financialization of global health and ends up constituting a risk itself - that of perpetuating the downsides of financialization (e.g. heightened inequality, secrecy, complexity in governance, an ineffective and slow use of aid), whilst insufficiently realising its potential benefits (pandemic risk reduction, increased public access to emergency funding, indirect price control over essential goods and services). Conclusion Future iterations of vaccine buyers’ and distribution clubs as well as public vaccine development efforts should work towards reducing all aspects of public health risk rather than privileging its corporate financial aspects. This will include reassessing the interplay of aid and corporate subsidies in global health.

14. Bovine Norwalk-like caliciviruses: a molecular assessment of the public health risk

2003 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
S.L. Oliver ◽  
A.M. Dastjerdi ◽  
L. El-Attar ◽  
C. Gallimore ◽  
D.W.G. Brown ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Risk ◽  
Public Health Risk ◽  
The Public ◽  
Molecular Assessment
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