| ASSESSMENT BRIEF | |
| Subject Code and Title | PUBH6006: Community Health and Disease Prevention |
| Assessment | Assessment 3: Emergency Response Plan – Non-communicable Disease Prevention |
| Individual/Group | Individual |
| Length | 1,500 words |
| Learning Outcomes | This assessment addresses the following learning outcome: 5. Apply theoretical frameworks to develop effective health promotion interventions |
| Weighting | 20% |
| Total Marks | 100 marks |
nstructions:
Prepare a community engagement and mobilization strategy for an emergency response plan for an outbreak of the Ebola virus. Your strategy should clearly state a step-by-step approach that ensures that communities are engaged to have an active role alongside authorities and health agencies in the plan to rapidly respond to the threat of the spread of the disease. The strategy should use headings for each stage of engagement, consultation, participation, organisation, capacity building, action and possibly empowerment. Explain your decision to use either a top-down and/or bottom-up approach.
Assessment Criteria:
Public Health Non-Communicable Disease PreventionResponse on Outbreak Ebola VirusAbstract: The duty of the public health officer is not only to ensure that the given area of public health is secured from any outbreak or any widespread non-communicable diseases, but the duty is also to ensure prevention and outbreak response to it. In the given case study, our main steps would be to consider prevention and also deal with any steps which would aid on to the health workers along with the collaborating with the future health workers that can help to work on the Ebola virus outbreak. With this, the main duty and action plans would be to help the principals’ actors that would be part of the team consisting of the health professional along with timely responding and also functioning towards the community response that can help to promote the health and also step up to prevent any spread of the outbreak (Baird, 2017).
As determined from the scope of the epidemiological studies, it has been considered how during the first time along with collaborating it with the Ebola virus (EVD) outbreak that can happen in the underdeveloped and poverty-ridden Africa, mainly aim to control the Sudan and Zaire, during 1976. With the given mortality rate that has impacted and controlled the EVD that surrounds the 50%, which would be collaborating within in Taha Africa, that has ensured how with the given mortality rate which would be as high 90%. To develop a critical path that would capture the knowledge would be aimed in controlling the widespread of EVD, that aims at the community setting along with progressing to focus on the first response that can capture in most of the outbreak.
Since the threat of epidemic is huge, analysis shows that society needs to be prepared an ready to tackle any such threat in the future and assess the preparedness of the people in coping up with such threat. by way of regular education of the virus and awareness in the society, we can assess and understand the potential of the community to cope with any such epidemic situation and thus as a measure of preparedness, the government could draw an emergency plan so that they could control the situation in future. thus society needs to understand the vision of the government and support them in their plans to prevent the spread of disease and help raise awareness about the same (Peykari, 2017).
Thus, there has to be a plan of action wherein the scope is defined and work gets done on a specific domain. Thus the first step to developing such a plan is to think of a workable plan where there could be a mode of readiness from community and response action in case of any outbreak of EVD. thus we need to be careful of the domain the risk assessment, identification of symptoms, deterrence and stopping the spread of the virus. There needs to be a thoughtful action plan wherein I training is given to the community to spread awareness and next steps in case of virus outburst. the people need to know what are they supposed to do in case of being infected or to stop the spread to virus further. Hence we need to have an excellent team of leader for effective planning the resources and also to have a contingency plan in case nothing work’s out. The planning committee needs to have a full view of local resources and infrastructure and take in use of them to develop teams, and train volunteers to form an informal or semi-formal team as well (Briggs, 2016).
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has laid certain measures to control the outbreak of EVD and the same is depicted in table 1. in a situation wherein someone has the information that can trigger an outbreak of epidemic, the same should be reported to relevant authorities so that precautionary measures could be undertaken to avoid spread of EVD and help control the damages. the awareness programs should be run by a health professional expert and it should be frequent enough so that there is a recall value to it in the minds of people (Ding, 2016). The information shared needs to be simple and unambiguous and thus it should be easily understood and recalled. it is also a good tool to have certain information shared in sign language as well as actions does have a better recall value. the whole idea is to spread awareness and give the society/community a first level idea of what needs to be done and what not to be done in case of detection of such symptom and thus the society acts to assist each other and benefit the whole community in preventing the spread or outburst of epidemic disease like Ebola virus. The people should understand the issues and do’s and dont’s which needs to be done and thus overall education and awareness levels increases. it is to be understood that the first and primary source of detection of a disease or its symptoms are the people being infected or their neighbors and thus they should understand basics and should report it to nearest medical authority or hospitals to spread information of the disease and saving life and money and efforts of many.
as we are not subject matter expert and thus we should not try and give medication or do anything more than helping patient with primary information of doe’s or don’t’s and should first inform the doctor or nearest hospital or such medical center which can do a thorough checkup and diagnose the ailment and prescribe medicines and do tests. As such the government body makes us aware of general symptoms and this does not mean that common public becomes subject matter expert and takes on to medication. by increasing awareness the government wants us to be informed and vigilant but the treatment should only be done by a proper doctor or medical authority/hospital so that the ailment gets cured completely (Oni, 2015).
Table 1 Australian Emergency
(2013). Community Engagement Framework p.6.
To understand emergency department per Attorney-General’s Department related to the communities that can face the emergency. | ||
First | It is to be understood that general awareness amongst the society needs to be improved and thus health officials and professionals should have awareness programs in the society to make people more aware of the disease so that health safety remains primary agenda. | |
Second Third | The awareness program should be simple and with a clear message so that it is easily understood. The awareness campaign should also be using sign or symbol so that it has a better recall value and thus it is important to hire agencies, professionals who can make people aware of the recall value. The most important is reporting of such case or disease to respective authority or agency. it is very important as it is the actual first step from where the information would be spread across and reach to the necessary doctor so that they can prevent its further spread so the reporting lines, the medium needs to be easy and robust. The role of social media and other communication channels are of utmost importance to spread awareness and flag an alert to all so that corrective actions be taken well in time thus saving lives. | |
| Forth | The next most critical and important message would be broadcast of alerts, advisories, and updates on issues of events and also to inform any additional health centers or laboratories setup, even temporarily, to help people. | |
| Fifth | As the government policies need volunteers to be the first point of contacts, such volunteers need motivation and the agencies can help them with some reward to encourage their efforts and keep them motivated. | |
| Sixth | Each one contributing to help in such scenarios should have adequate training measures to wade off such epidemic scenario. it is very important even for medicine distributing team, health checks up to the team and volunteers as well. | |
Table 1Australian Emergency Management Institute. Community Engagement Framework(2013), World Health Organization (2015)
thus building a community post outburst of an epidemic is directly proportional to the economic wealth possessed by them and the knowledge levels they possess in helping see off the epidemic and its results. thus an informed set of people are better off in rebuilding the society (Nugent, 2018).
Conclusion
the main key to face an EVD break out is to be informed and be prepared for the same in groups or at an individual level and face the same with a pragmatic approach rather than unprepared and remain unorganized and thus causing a great deal of difficulty to yourself and community. Thus, the community needs to be aware and reasonably knowledgeable so that they do not panic and take correct steps and with the help of medical facilities save lives and reduce the impact. thus besides having a sound planning system and infrastructure, there is also a requirement of timely training nad mock situations wherein we can see the preparedness of people and their abilities in case of the outburst of an epidemic. this could be also extended to the community, medical centers, and all other service providers to check their level of preparations from time to time. we also need to understand that since the epidemic does not come informed, we should always be vigilant of symptoms which could lead to break out of EVD’s and thus it is very important to have sound plans and awareness programs that need to be continuously carried out to masses. the training camps and medical centers should be equipped to treat the ailing patients and there should be enough medicines to give to infected people. we thus see that a robust plan is the need of the hour and would help in saving g time and effort and resources as well and would lead to a healthy society at large (Vaidya, 2018).
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