In today’s environment, every country tries hard to tackle the spreading challenges, preventing the spread of potential pandemic-causing viruses like the coronavirus or the Ebola virus, while keeping its population as healthy as possible. These viruses reveal the dramatic and ongoing rise of infections focusing attention on the need for a global response.
We hear the terms disaster management, disaster cycle security, and public health emergency used very often, and interchangeably. We have a brief idea as to what their meanings are but not of how they’re related. Cooperation is not something new since countries have long ago realized, they must share knowledge, technologies, materials, and resources as well as joint surveillance, prevention, and response processes to effectively activate and respond.
They have also realized they must build a better response network, emphasizing the need for collaboration between them and responding globally to potential health emergencies. This fact is important to know that organizations can declare a public health emergency when the negative health consequences of a situation that has just appeared, have the potential to disturb routine community abilities and resources to address them. A period that can be considered the aftermath of many recent disasters or public health threats, being prepared and able to face such horrible situations has become the public health mission’s center of attention at the national level.
The main point to emphasize here is that the emergence of deadly viruses helped by modernization and international travel, as well as the threat of terrorism in the form of science, have highlighted the need for an increased ability to recognize and manage public health risks and emergencies. Our response plans in disasters of any phase aim to reduce the vulnerability of people and specifically to rapidly spreading health risks, particularly those that cross international borders.
The ever-changing threat pattern which triggers disasters has a serious impact on all healthcare systems. These serious aftermath results together with danger to the life and health of the community caught the attention of the public health community. The response stories that have been recorded from disasters serve as a reminder of society’s susceptibility to a public health disaster and show the need for efficient plans put in place for emergencies.
Institutions around the world responded positively by adopting sanctions and bills on the enhancement of the national preparedness system. We may get the idea that improved laboratories, emergency response networks, and surveillance together with enough provision of pharmaceuticals and vaccines from the accountable infrastructure. It is not an easy thing to do due to the range, complexity, and scales of the new and ever-changing modern challenges to health security.
The new framework calls for better approaches of comparable strength, which considers the protection of the world from international and intranational health threats. To achieve the best possible level of global public health security, it is recommended that the careful implementation of existing health regulations which are accepted internationally by all countries is followed together with a list of international disease control programs.
Marked inefficiencies triggered increased concerns in the aftermath of terrorist events and concerns about the pandemic influenza and other infectious diseases revealed that public health response is not only centered on all hazards approach and orientation. Designing the answer, we are forced to consider not only the existing threat but also others possibly appearing and remerging new infectious diseases creating a new pattern of threats.
Although society has made huge progress when we talk about the fight against infectious disease, things can be seen getting complicated since it is now realized scientists that may have to fight a future epidemic involving a deadly virus. It is a nightmare since many evolutions have resulted in contagious illnesses spreading faster and farther than ever, such as the increase in air traffic.
It is for sure not an easy task because recent events have shown, global public health security corresponds to a costly, complex, and mostly pattern which is information intense. The procedures require strong national infrastructure and leadership, among other things. We must not neglect the well-functioning laboratories and service delivery systems, the ability of a country and population to sustain and ability to quick response to unexpected events must be available for disposal. It is not an easy task, but it is a necessary one because investment in such elements will strengthen global public health security.
Public health preparedness is considered a multidisciplinary endeavor. A well-designed public health preparedness system must create the proper infrastructure and environment for response activities such as regulating environmental conditions and planning for emergency medical and public health response capabilities.
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