...Disease In The News Norman Fountain HCS 245 January 12, 2011 Betty Abraham-Settles Disease In The News In the spring of 2009 I was serving in the Army at Fort Gordon, GA. I was awakened early in the morning by the Administrative Officer of the Day (AOD). I was informed I needed to put my Company on alert and report in to Headquarters (HQ) for a briefing at 0600 (6:00 a.m.,). Once I was dressed and reported in for the briefing, I was informed there was an outbreak of Swine Flu coming from out of Mexico. I was to gather my Soldiers and inform them of this information and to ensure we had no family members in danger and leaves and passes were suspended until further notice. The significance of the event of a Swine Flu outbreak was headline news in most newspapers across the nation. In The New York Times April 27, 2009, an article titled, U.S. Declares Public Health Emergency Over Swine Flu (McNeil, Jr., 2012), illustrates the reason for my call early in the morning and why the need to put my Company on alert. The article outlined the possible global pandemic stemming from swine flu cases from Mexico. In the United States 20 cases of the swine flu were confirmed during this time, leading American health officials declaring a public health emergency. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) confirmed eight illnesses from the H1N1virus in Queens, NY. Those illnesses came from St. Francis Preparatory School and prompted the Mayor of NY Michael R. Bloomberg to ensure...
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...Disease in the News Jamika McMillian 245 April 12, 2012 Professor Wendy Cockron Abstract Anthrax is a life threatening disease that harms not only animals, but humans as well. There are several types of anthrax and many different types of treatments to help cure them. Although some who are infected with anthrax do not always survive. Anthrax is not common in the U.S. but it does sometimes occur. Anthrax is nationally discussed in most of today’s disease trends. Disease in the News Following the 1998 reports of a series of bioterrorist threats of anthrax exposure, the public health implications of these threats were investigated to assist in developing national public health guidelines for responding to bioterrorism. The U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) developed interim guidelines for managing anthrax in 2001. What follows is a summary of the investigational findings and subsequently published CDC guidelines for public health authorities regarding anthrax-related acts of bioterrorism (Matteucci, 2011). Anthrax is a life threatening infectious disease that normally affects animals, especially ruminants (such as goats, cattle, sheep, and horses. Anthrax can be transmitted to humans by contact with infected animals or their products. Anthrax is now rare in humans in the United States and developed countries. In recent years anthrax has received a great deal of attention as it has become clear that the infection can also be spread by a...
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...The swine flu virus is a new virus strain that caused a worldwide pandemic in humans from June 2009 to August 2010. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now call the virus 2009 H1N1. Earlier forms of the H1N1 virus were found in pigs. Over time, the virus changed and can now infect humans. Because H1N1 is a new virus in humans, a persons immune system cannot fight the virus very well. As a result, it has spread quickly around the world. (http://www.righthealth.com) The largest number of H1N1 flu cases have occurred in people ages 5 - 24. Few cases have been reported in people older than age 64. The H1N1 flu virus can spread from person to person when: Someone with the flu coughs or sneezes into air that others breathe in. (http://www.righthealth.com) The symptoms of swine flu are a lot like the regular seasonal flu. They can include: • Fever or shaking chills. • Cough. • Sore throat. • Body aches. • Headache. • Extreme tiredness (fatigue). (http://www.stedwardmercy.com) You cannot get H1N1 swine flu virus from eating pork or any other food, drinking water, swimming in pools, or using a hot tubs or saunas. (http://www.righthealth.com) It is called Swine Flu because it originates from a transfer of an influenza virus from a pig to a human being. There are different strains that can jump from pig to human. In 1918 a version of the Swine Flu became pandemic. In 1976 there was another outbreak. In 2009 it reared its head...
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...Disease in the News Shontavia Harris HCS 245 September 19, 2011 Cheryl Meaux Disease in the News According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), there were 35,962 cases of AIDS in 2007 diagnosed and 14,110 deaths among people living with HIV in the United States. For years there has been a large amount of research done to understand how HIV/AID’s target human cells. Researchers have also done extensive research trying to find a cure for AID’s. Researchers at Duke University Medical Center, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Harvard Medical School have discovered a possible vaccine through extensive research that may use an alter form of HIV’s outer protein coating. It may not be the answer to provide officially a treatment for HIV, but it is one step closer in the right direction to finding a cure. An article provided by Duke University Medical Center gives insight into a way that may be an effective vaccine option used to alter HIV’s cells for patients. Aside from the information given on a vaccine is information about the research and insight from various health care personnel’s. HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) leads to AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). HIV is transmitted through acquiring unprotected sex or multiple sex partners, sharing of personal equipment such as needles, and passed from mother to baby that targets the immune system by affecting the white blood cells and organ cells. HIV is hard to distinguish when it is contracted because...
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...Bubonic Plague Article Joanna Hull HCS/245 August 7, 2012 Lavinia Goto Bubonic Plague In the mid-14th century in Europe, there was a deadly disease that spread like wild fire killing millions of people who came in contact with it. The disease is called the bubonic plague also known as the Black Death and it affects the lymphatic system causing your lymph nodes to swell. People do not usually spread bubonic plague from person to person. Small rodents, such as rat, mice, and squirrels, carry the infection. Fleas that live on these animals act as “vectors” and carry the infection from the rodent to humans (“Bubonic Plague,”2010). It is said to have originated from China and later spread to Europe and then Russia killing millions. This happened over thousands of years ago, but still happens today worldwide just not as bad as it was in the 14th century. According to the World Health Organization, there are 1,000 to 3,000 cases of bubonic plague worldwide each year. A man from Oregon was very unfortunate to have come in contact with this infection and this is his terrifying story about him fighting for survival. Paul Gaylord, 59, was in his home in Prineville, Oregon enjoying a beautiful summer day when he saw that his cat had a rodent in its mouth. Paul tried to grab the rodent out of his cat’s mouth and while trying to do this; his cat scratched and bit him in the process. Paul went to his doctor to get some antibiotics to prevent him...
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...Shingles Shingles (Herpes Zoster) is a rash found on the skin that originates from the same virus as chickenpox. “This virus is called the Varicella zoster virus (VZV) and is in the herpes family of viruses. After an individual has chickenpox, this virus lives dormant in the nervous system and is never fully cleared from the body”, (Stoppler, 2010). The virus reactivates when the carrier becomes extremely stressed, develops an immune deficiency, develops cancer, or other similar circumstances. Shingles usually occurs in people over the age of 60 but anyone can be at risk of getting the virus. Symptoms of the virus usually start with a very painful, sensitive area on the skin for several days. Next, a rash will appear with blisters that continue to form for about three to five days. “The blisters follow the path of individual nerves that come out of the spinal cord in a specific "ray-like" distribution (called a dermatomal pattern) and appear in a band-like pattern on an area of skin. The entire path of the affected nerve may be involved, or there may be areas in the distribution of the nerve with blisters and areas without blisters”, (Stoppler, 2010). In most cases, only one nerve will be affected by the virus. After the blisters pop, they will begin to heal. The duration of the viral outbreak will usually last between three and four weeks. Treatment Shingles is contagious and can be spread from the infected person to people who have not yet had the chickenpox. If infected...
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...Disease in the News: Swine Flu Debra Wilson HCS245 January 13, 2014 Windy Tanner Disease in the News: Swine Flu In November, 2013 an article appeared in PLOS Medicine, which is a weekly peer-reviewed medical journal that covers the whole spectrum of medical sciences. PLOS stands for Public Library of Science. This article has to do with swine flu deaths from the 2009 global outbreak and a new study by researchers in 26 different countries that point to the fact that the number of people who died in the 2009 swine flu outbreak was much higher than original World Health Organization official figures have shown. The new study presented in PLOS Medicine gives an estimate of world-wide swine flu deaths to have been about 203,000. This figure is roughly ten times higher than that given by the World Health Organization (WHO)-which based its total only on laboratory confirmed cases and deaths. Also, this study looked into the number of deaths by causes that became exacerbated or intensified by swine flu infection. When these deaths were taken into account, the total number of deaths due to infection by swine flu nearly doubled the 203,000 total. This was approximately more than twenty times higher than the WHO total-which, just to reiterate, was solely based on lab confirmed cases, etc... When making comments on the study (which was funded by WHO to look into the details of the outbreak and to try to come up with a more accurate death toll), one of the main researchers...
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...Evolution of New and Old Communicable Diseases According to Gordis (2004), epidemiology is defined as “the study of the distribution and determinants of health related states and event of diseases in specified populations and the application of this study to control of health problems”. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is contagious and potentially life threatening form of pneumonia which was first detected in February 2003 in Asia and it spread to various countries in Europe, North America and South America before it was declared as SARS 2003 global outbreak (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2004). SARS is an acute respiratory tract illness caused by an infectious virus transmitted from person to person. Various pathogens that cause acute respiratory diseases are respiratory syncytical virus, parainfluenza virus, influenza virus and severe acute respiratory syndrome-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV) (WHO, 2007). In 2003, various scientists across the world started investigating the virus with the help of electron microscopy and virus discovery microarrays. The new coronavirus was inoculated in monkeys which caused interstitial pneumonia similar to SARS (Holmes, 2003). This newly identified acute viral respiratory syndrome caused by a novel coronavirus is a positive-stranded RNA virus with genome containing nucleocapsid protein, membrane proteins and spike protein which forms the typical “coronavirus” structure (Lashley & Durham, 2007). Spreading...
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...Disease in the News Professor HCS/245 June 23, 2013 Disease in the News This paper is going to be talking about a virus that has affected the local school population of a small town in Pennsylvania (The Daily Item, 2012). News about this particular virus hit the headlines of a locally circulated newspaper, The Daily Item. This has alerted the schools and hospitals in the area. The CDC calls this illness ‘fifth disease’ and there had been five cases of outbreak in the local schools. The virus occurs typically among children and is relatively well-tolerated. When it infects adults who are immune-compromised, however, it commonly causes complications. This virus is highly transmissible but usually disappears without any treatment. The viral infection is caused by the human parvovirus B19, which commonly affects children between ages five and fifteen. B19 virus causes a childhood rash called fifth disease or erythema infectiosum which is commonly called slapped cheek syndrome (CDC, 2012). The virus was discovered by chance in 1975 by Australian virologist Yvonne Cossart (Reamy and Hodge, 2007). At the onset of the infection, the virus-infected person will be observed with a low-grade fever and symptoms resembling those of a mild cold. When the child begins to look well and after the fever and other symptoms have subsided, bright red rashes will spread like a lace across the child’s face and torso. The appearance of rashes indicates that the child can attend school...
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...The article titled Who Dies from Heart Disease? “New Research Defines Those at Highest Risk” 2011, is written by Meredith Melnick. She is a journalist for TIME Healthland online magazine. Her writings have appeared in the New York Daily News, The Record, House & Garden and on Newsweek.com, was a Digital Media Fellow at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. The author sets out to show that newly uncovered risk factors in heart disease may help doctors and patients to recognize those who might be at higher risk of dying from heart incidents, and encourage them to pay close attention to maintaining their hearts healthy. The author’s evidence was supported from a report in the British Medical Journal's Health. The research was conducted by a team of physicians from the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center One notable source from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center is a physician named Dr. Elsayed Z. Soliman. The doctor’s input was instrumental in holding my attention and further solidified the article’s authentication. Dr. Elsayed Z. Soliman explained “Identifying specific predictors that separate the risk of sudden cardiac death from that of non-fatal or not immediately fatal heart attacks would be the first step to address this problem, which was the basis for our study” (Time Magazine healthland,2011) He included other useful information such as risk factors that include ethnicity, blood pressure, body mass index (BMI) and an ECG report. These risk factors could...
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...Teaching Program: Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Camden New Jersey Grand Canyon University Primary Prevention/Health Promotion: Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Camden New Jersey Introduction Education represents a critical aspect in promoting health given that when members of the population are knowledgeable about diseases or medical conditions, they can respond appropriately. In other words, education can be used to forewarn and forearm the members of the communities against the different medical issues that affect them. As such, it is important that healthcare workers develop comprehensive teaching plans to promote health care practices among the populations. Against this backdrop, this essay offers a teaching plan on the topic of primary prevention/health promotion and the issue of sexually transmitted diseases in Camden New Jersey. Summary of the Teaching Plan The objective of the teaching plan is to enlighten the teenagers of Camden, New Jersey about the problem of sexually transmitted diseases. In this regard, the topic of the education program will be sexually transmitted diseases in Camden, New Jersey. This will entail teaching the members of the community about the various sexually transmitted diseases concerning their modes of spread or contraction, health impacts, and the ways of preventing them. To realize this objective, the teaching plan will target teenagers in the community. To advance the educational program, sporting and entertainment events...
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...Disease in News There have been many articles related to diseases in the news as the years have passed; as the healthcare industry changes public knowledge and education become more prevalent. The better educated the more healthcare professionals can aid the public in taking responsibility on how to treat the disease. "Once a disease has entered the body, all parts which are healthy must fight it: not one alone, but all. Because a disease might mean their common death, nature knows this; and nature attacks the disease with whatever help she can muster." ("Quotes About Disease", n.d. Paracelsus, Philipus ) Totally Drug-Resistant TB Emerges in India In recent news, physicians have encountered a totally drug-resistant strain of TB that has emerged in India. Data conducted by Giovanni Migliori, director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases in Tradate, Italy, suggests that this strain, TDR-TB, is a deadlier iteration of the highly resistant forms of TB that have been increasingly reported over the past decade. Totally resistant TB is not new at all” (Rowland, 2012, para. 3). The official accounts have not yet been determined but the scare of this potentially fatal disease coming back has physicians and private organizations prompting pharmaceutical industries to redirect their interests in finding new treatments for the disease. Research suggests that this drug resistance is due to the inadequate care and mismanagement of...
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...England. Their biggest reason for victory, however, was unintended. You could call it biological warfare before there was even such a thing or term. When the colonists came to the New World they brought something hidden that the Native Americans never saw coming. The Colonists main weapon was called disease. When the Europeans made their way across the Atlantic Ocean, they were armed with microbes that had never before been introduced to the new world. The Columbian Exchange is a term that has been coined describing the introduction of new animals, plants and technology ideas by the Europeans to the New World. The introduction of new disease worked the other way around in regards to the introduction of new things being taken back to Europe from the New World. Many of the new things brought forth to the new world had positive economic impact. Unfortunately, with these new additions to life in the new world came the unintentional introduction of Diseases never before seen by the Native Americans. The Native Americans were the group that was hardest hit by disease in terms of the number of deaths. According to "Gettysburg.edu" (n.d.), “Since the Indians were isolated from other cultures and peoples before the arrival of the Europeans, this weakened their defenses against the major diseases of mankind.” The deadliest...
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...problems they face or may face in their lives. Some people are fortunate enough to live their whole lives disease free and others that are not so fortunate. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, also known as the CDC, has a helping hand in assisting a healthy and unhealthy public with disease prevention and training or assistance. The CDC is one of the major operating components of the Department of Health and Human Services. The center for Disease Control and Prevention is an organization that specializes in the detection and prevention of unknown or unfamiliar diseases and illnesses. It is an organization that I chose to research due to its priority, which is our nation’s health. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention helps save people and lives. According to cdc.gov, the mission of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention is to collaborate to create the expertise, information, and tools that people and communities need to protect their health; through health promotion, prevention of disease, injury and disability, and preparedness for new health threats. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention monitors people’s health, which helps them detect and investigate new illnesses or diseases and research and monitor already known illnesses and diseases. Through the detection and investigation of new illnesses and diseases it will help the Center for Disease Control and Prevention implement newer state of the are prevention strategies, promote healthy human behaviors...
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...develop new theories and ideas once previous postulates are shown to be inadequate. After numerous attempts to understand how germs spread, scientists still lacked a theory that explained the cause of diseases. The germ theory was instrumental in formulating an understanding of various diseases in order to protect the public from lethal epidemics. The development of the germ theory is credited to Dr. Robert Koch, Dr. Joseph Lister and chemist Louis Pasteur. The theory helped other scientists develop future vaccines and procedures to stop the spread of disease. The invention significantly changed how society and medical experts thought about and practiced medicine. The germ theory made it possible for scientists to discover the complex causes of infections and diseases such as cholera. At first, the general public was very apprehensive about the rapidly changing medical practices that resulted from the germ theory. However, once these practices were successful, the public trusted the new procedures such as the introduction of the antiseptic practice. Although many medical breakthroughs were introduced in the late 19th and early 20th century the most significant was the discovery of the germ theory because it allowed European physicians to discover other medicines. It was the foundation for the discovery of other medicines such as cholera and the inception of antiseptic surgery. Before the invention of the germ theory, scientists did not understand the concept of disease. Surgical...
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