The pandemics of SARS and avian influenza during the past two years have underscored the importance of emerging diseases and their impact on health and economic development. Asia is, unfortunately, at the epicentre of such epidemics. Moreover, many new micro-organisms have emerged and several existing communicable diseases are spreading to newer areas. Several of the 30 new micro-organisms detected in last three decades, have profoundly affected many countries in the South-East Asia Region. This document visualizes strategies for confronting the challenge of emerging infectious diseases.
Public Health in East and Southeast Asia presents an overview of the state of public health across this vast region and considers the challenges and prospects for its future advancement. It pays particular attention to how rapid economic progress has brought accelerated change, both demographic and epidemiological, to an area already marked by great heterogeneity in health status and public health systems. In comparative and thematically oriented chapters, leading scholars consider such issues as changes in values and lifestyles, infectious diseases, nutrition, tobacco, chronic diseases, accidents and injury, environmental health, occupational health, the effect of globalization, and health services.
In October 1999, the Forum on Emerging Infections of the Institute of Medicine convened a two-day workshop titled "International Aspects of Emerging Infections." Key representatives from the international community explored the forces that drive emerging infectious diseases to prominence. Representatives from the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe made formal presentations and engaged in panel discussions. Emerging Infectious Diseases from the Global to the Local Perspective includes summaries of the formal presentations and suggests an agenda for future action. The topics addressed cover a wide range of issues, including trends in the incidence of infectious diseases around the world, descriptions of the wide variety of factors that contribute to the emergence and reemergence of these diseases, efforts to coordinate surveillance activities and responses within and across borders, and the resource, research, and international needs that remain to be addressed.
Experts discuss the threat posed by emerging viruses and describe ongoing efforts to face future outbreaks by searching for new antivirals, developing new vaccines, and improving methods of diagnosis and surveillance. Australian contributor.
Providing an immediate, contemporary example of a region networking its response to disease outbreak events, this insightful book will appeal to global health governance scholars, students, and practitioners.
With many Asian countries experiencing increasing economic growth and globalization, infectious diseases that were once contained in certain pockets of the continent now proliferate throughout its geographical area. It is the alarming prospect of unchecked epidemics that makes this book so crucial. The chapters cover the historical description of infectious diseases, analyze the causes of them and even forecast outbreaks, as well as the regional and global impact of these diseases. There is a pressing need for public health professionals worldwide to know and understand the variety of these infections, the methods through which they are transmitted, and the ways to control and prevent them. This comprehensive text offers them just that.
Providing an immediate, contemporary example of a region networking its response to disease outbreak events, this insightful book will appeal to global health governance scholars, students, and practitioners.
Southeast Asia is a region where a myriad of infections are endemic. It is a hotspot region for parasitic diseases. Currently, information on parasitic infections and vectors found in Southeast Asia is sporadic and there has been no attempt to extensively collate and integrate these data. Gaps in our knowledge, which include disease patterns, transmission dynamics and vectors still exist. This book highlights parasitic diseases that are peculiar to Southeast Asia, pinpoints similarities and differences between disease patterns in the respective member countries and provide information on new emerging parasitic diseases in this region. Critically, this book will heighten understanding of parasitic diseases and their vectors in this diverse region and this knowledge will be significant for future regional research efforts in this field.
Recent disease events such as SARS, H1N1 and avian influenza, and haemorrhagic fevers have focussed policy and public concern as never before on epidemics and so-called 'emerging infectious diseases'. Understanding and responding to these often unpredictable events have become major challenges for local, national and international bodies. All too often, responses can become restricted by implicit assumptions about who or what is to blame that may not capture the dynamics and uncertainties at play in the multi-scale interactions of people, animals and microbes. As a result, policies intended to forestall epidemics may fail, and may even further threaten health, livelihoods and human rights. The book takes a unique approach by focusing on how different policy-makers, scientists, and local populations construct alternative narratives-accounts of the causes and appropriate responses to outbreaks- about epidemics at the global, national and local level. The contrast between emergency-oriented, top-down responses to what are perceived as potentially global outbreaks and longer-term approaches to diseases, such as AIDS, which may now be considered endemic, is highlighted. Case studies-on avian influenza, SARS, obesity, H1N1 influenza, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and haemorrhagic fevers-cover a broad historical, geographical and biological range. As this book explores, it is often the most vulnerable members of a population-the poor, the social excluded and the already ill-who are likely to suffer most from epidemic diseases. At the same time, they may be less likely to benefit from responses that may be designed from a global perspective that neglects social, ecological and political conditions on the ground. This book aims to bring the focus back to these marginal populations to reveal the often unintended consequences of current policy responses to epidemics. Important implications emerge - for how epidemics are thought about and represented; for how surveillance and response is designed; and for whose knowledge and perspectives should be included. Published in association with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
