Health Facilities Capabilities
How would you monitor the disease and the numbers in the population?
Shannon Holfoth, Rachel Francis, Caitlin Moreland, Teresa Castiglione, and Katie VanUden write: Medical institutions around the world should be required to follow a uniform protocol procedure in case a response to the virus is needed in that area. This procedure should include notifying a central organization whose sole purpose would be to monitor, track, and gain as much information as possible on the virus. Medical institutions would be responsible for providing information on patients’ symptoms, background, family ( or close contacts to whom the virus may have spread), and all around statistics. The developed central organization would then in turn be responsible for ordering the necessary precautions to allieviate the effects of the outbreak.
Candace Morrison and Vineeth Nagabundi write: As the Avian flu threat increases and as the global fear grows, it becomes imperative to set certain monitoring devices in motion. To
begin such a task one united agency, one that spans countries and
continents alike, could be placed in charge of collecting and analyzing
data. An ideal agency for this task would be the World Health
Organization. The WHO already has surveillance programs for infectious
pathogens like TB. Currently, when a case of H5N1 bird flu is
reported, the WHO will become involved. The WHO website offers
situation updates from affected locales around the world. Every time a
case of bird flu appears, the WHO organization should be notified, the
WHO should in turn share this information with global health officials
so that proper steps may be taken to control an outbreak.
How would you assess the efficiency of your control efforts?
Shannon Holfoth, Rachel Francis, Caitlin Moreland, Teresa Castiglione, and Katie VanUden write: Simply by visual representation of statistics via means of graphs and other such displays of all information. Then we could easily determine the effects of out efforts to control the virus.
Candace Morrison and Vineeth Nagabundi write: Assessment is simply about comparing numbers. When all available data is charted,
trends may appear which indicate whether a drop in bird flu occurs when
there is information to prevent a rampant spread.
What is a sentinel organism and how could it be used in this situation?
Shannon Holfoth, Rachel Francis, Caitlin Moreland, Teresa Castiglione, and Katie VanUden write: A sentinel organism is utilized to determine if an infectious pathogen of the virus is present. The use of such an organism would assist in the identification of the virus and thereby make it somewhat easier to control.
Candace Morrison and Vineeth Nagabundi write:A sentinel organism is an organism that indicates whether an infectious pathogen has
reoccurred. For the avian flu potential pandemic, a sentinel organism
could work well as a guard to an explosive as being indicative of a
minute appearance.