Community & Public Health Nursing

Community & Public Health Nursing

Synopsis - Chapter 7

Epidemiology is the study of the frequency, distribution, and determinants of disease in humans. Its aim is the prevention or effective control of disease. The term originated in the study of epidemics, rapidly spreading diseases that affect large numbers of a population (from the Greek epi meaning upon and demos meaning people). Epidemiology touches on ethics in two key areas: The need for competent and honest use of its information, and questions of responsibility rose by the global picture it presents of the health of humanity (Gail et al., 2000).

Speculation about the nature and causes of disease dates back to antiquity. The formal history of epidemiology, like that of statistics, begins with the systematic official recording of births and deaths in the seventeenth century, proceeding to the quantitative investigation of diseases with the emergence of scientific medicine in the nineteenth. Epidemiology may be descriptive or analytic. Descriptive epidemiology reports the general characteristics of a disease in a population. Its methods include case reports, correlational studies (to describe any association between potential risk factors and disease in a given database) and cross-sectional surveys (to determine prevalence of a disease and potential risk factors at a given point in time).

Epidemiology can be used to identify the potential spread of these infectious diseases through various ways. This is done firstly through descriptive epidemiology, which is the, branch of epidemiology that describes the time, place and person, quantifying the frequency and distribution of the phenomenon through measures of incidence, prevalence and mortality, with the subsequent formulation of hypotheses. An infectious disease results from the interaction between an infectious agent, the host and environmental factors (Gail et al., 2000). Epidemiology is an important part of public health and contributes to define the major health problems of the community along with determining the strategy of intervention (prevention or control) most appropriate with respect to the infectious diseases (Rohani, 2009, page 17)

Synopsis -Chapter 8

The term "communicable disease" is a technical term that is widespread use, and defined by the Pan American Health: any illness caused by a specific infectious agent or its toxic products, which manifests itself by the transmission of this agent or its products. An infected person or animal or a reservoir to a susceptible host through an intermediate host of vegetable or inanimate environment either directly or indirectly. The expression “communicable disease” can be synthesized as a disease whose etiologic agent is alive and is transferable. Diseases are those in which the organism infested that can migrate to the sound, with or without an intermediate stage in the development of an environment (Arbring et al., 2013).

Most infectious diseases are associated with poverty and underdevelopment. The dependent with causation of diseases indicates the tropical diseases that are strongly linked to poverty. As support for measures is to control these diseases, it would be able to propose the removal of poverty and its attendant (lack of access to land, school, water etc). Permanent measures to fill in this gap would ...