Infectious Disease

In Ukraine in spite of considerable financial expenses on oral immunization of foxes and parenteral immunization of dogs and cats, it is not succeeded to reach considerable results in the fight with rabies. Unfortunately there was a negative tendency to increasing a part of dogs and cats in the structure of rabies disease which are the main source of rabies in people.

Objective

The purpose of the research was to find out the reasons of rabies antropurgisation in Ukraine.

National borders do not prevent the transmission of pathogens and associated vectors among border populations. The Naval Health Research Center (NHRC) has collaborated with the Mexican Secretariat of Health, the U. S. Department of State’s Biosecurity Engagement Program (BEP) and the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in concert with local health officials to conduct ILI surveillance (since 2004) and SARI surveillance (since 2009) in the border region.

Objective

To identify the pathogens responsible for influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) along the U.S.-Mexico border region in San Diego and Imperial Counties, CA and Pima County, AZ.

HIV is growing rapidly worldwide resulting in estimated 34 million population. Recently, its epidemic has spread in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, and most parts of Asia. According to Antenatal sero surveillance study conducted in 2011 by Agriteam canada, it’s prevalence in Pakistan is <0.1.Focusing narrowly, its prevalence in Sindh, (one of the provinces of Pakistan) is similar in general population, but it is in the phase of concentrated epidemic (having more than 5% of prevalence in high risk groups)in vulnerable groups like IDUs and Male sex workers and transgender. Sexual intercourse has been identified as major route especially in HIV high risk groups including male sex workers, female sex workers (FSWs), transgender (hijras) and IV drug users. Among them, FSWs are at high risk because of unprotected sex and illicit drug use. Their prevalence is found to be 30.7% in low and middle income countries. South Asia contributed with 12.63 lakh FSW in India only. On the basis of their station of work, they are categorized into facility based (kothikhana, brothel or home) and mobile (street, mobile or beggars). They use different preventive measures including condom for their protection from HIV. It varies with availability and access . FSWs typology have different cliental and mode of action, therefore, it important to explore the preventive methods.

Objective

We aimed to determine the association of FSWs typology with condom use among HIV high risk groups in Sindh, Pakistan

During summer 2012, Washington State Department of Health (WA DOH) surveyed ILINet providers and found that more than half either utilize their electronic medical record system (EMRS) to gather and report weekly ILINet data, or intend to implement queries to do so in the future. There are a variety of EMRS being used state-wide, and providers that currently utilize these systems to report ILINet data apply a wide range of methods to query their data. There exists great interest in the evaluation of ambulatory care data within the context of Meaningful Use and little research is published in this area. WA DOH sought to evaluate electronic data from WA outpatient clinic networks in order to determine if a syndromic ILI definition previously validated for emergency department (ED) data accurately identified ILI visits in electronic ambulatory care data.

Objective:

To determine if a syndromic influenza-like illness (ILI) definition previously validated for emergency department (ED) data accurately identified ILI visits in electronic ambulatory care data.

Communicable disease surveillance is a core Public Health function. Many diseases must be reported to state and federal agencies (1). To manage and adjudicate such cases, public health stakeholders gather various data elements. Since cases are identified in various healthcare settings, not all information sought by public health is available (2) resulting in varied field completeness, which affects the measured and perceived data quality. To better understand this variation, we evaluated public health practitioners’ perceived value of these fields to initiate or complete communicable disease reports.

Objective:

To assess communicable disease report fields required by public health practitioners and evaluate the variation in the perceived utility of these fields.

 

Pertussis (i.e., whooping cough) is on the rise in the US. To implement effective prevention and treatment strategies, it is critical to conduct timely contact tracing and evaluate people who may have come into contact with an infected person. We describe a collaborative effort between epidemiologists and public health informaticists at the Utah Department of Health (UDOH) to determine the feasibility and value of a network-analytic approach to pertussis outbreak management and contact tracing.

Objective: 

To determine the feasibility and value of a social network analysis tool to support pertussis outbreak management and contact tracing in the state of Utah.

 

So as to develop more effective countermeasures against influenza, timely and precise information about influenza activity at schools, kindergartens, and nursery schools may be helpful. At the Infectious Diseases Surveillance Center of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, a School Absenteeism Surveillance System (SASSy) has been in operation since 2009. SASSy monitors the activity of varicella, mumps, mycoplasma pneumonia, pharyngoconjunctival fever, hand-foot-mouth disease, influenza, and many other infectious diseases in schools. In 2010, SASSy was extended to the Nursery School Absenteeism Surveillance System (NSASSy). These systems record the number of absentees due to infectious diseases in each class of all grades of schools every day. As a powerful countermeasure to the pandemic flu of 2009, SASSy was activated in 9 prefectures, in which included more than 6000 schools, and it is gradually being adopted in other prefectures. As of February 2012, 18 prefectures and 4 big cities, which together comprised 15,700 schools (about 35% of all schools in Japan), utilized SASSy. NSASSy is used in more than 4100 nursery schools, which is about 18% of all nursery schools in Japan. Some studies of similar systems were performed in the UK (1), Hong Kong (2), and the USA (3,4), examined surveillance systems for monitoring infectious disease incidence, but the systems to construct in those studies do not operate nationwide like SASSy or NSASSy, and they cannot provide influenza incidence rates in children.

Objective: 

So far, it is difficult to show the incidence rate of influenza in the official sentinel surveillance in Japan. Hence we construct the system which record infectious diseases at schools, kindergartens, and nursery schools, and then can show the accurate incidence rate of influenza in children by age/grade.

West Nile Virus (WNV) and dengue virus (DENV) are both arboviruses which are transmitted to humans by an infected mosquito bite during blood-meal feeding. The clinical presentations of nonneuroinvasive WNV and dengue fever are similar, and symptoms may include acute onset of high fever, headache, myalgia, arthralgia, nausea, vomiting, and often a maculopapular rash. More serious manifestations of these viruses include fatal encephalitis and meningitis in WNV patients and fatal hemorrhagic disease in dengue patients. Over the last decade, WNV has spread rapidly across North America, reaching Arizona in 2004, and has become a significant cause of human illness since that time. Even though dengue has been described as primarily a disease of the tropics and sub-tropical areas, there is a small but significant risk for dengue outbreaks in the continental United States as evidenced by surveillance efforts in Texas that identified local dengue transmission in 2005. In recent years, outbreaks of dengue have occurred in Mexico border states, most notably Sonora in 2010. That same year, Arizona had the highest incidence of WNV cases in the U.S. including number of neuroinvasive disease cases, total cases, and number of deaths per state. The emergence of DENV and WNV as important public health problems maybe have been due to non-effective mosquito control, global demographic changes (urbanization and population growth), increased air travel, and inadequate surveillance.

Objective:

To enhance arboviral surveillance and laboratory capacity to establish a surveillance baseline for the emerging threat of Dengue fever in the Arizona-Mexico border region.