Importance of Cultural Competence in Measles Disease Outbreaks and Response

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Importance of Cultural Competence in Measles Disease Outbreaks and Response

Cultural competency on matters of healthcare refers to the aptitude of experts to show their competences towards patients with unique beliefs, values as well as intuition (Holzmann et al., 2016). Therefore, experts tend to consider individual feelings, cultures as well as the social desires of the patient with dynamic cross-cultural interactions on healthcare. However, such competences aspire to lower disparities on health, ensure the provision of excellent healthcare for patients to concern with ethnicity, gender, religious, cultural beliefs as well as race. Regarding cultural competences on healthcare, it is evidenced that the quality and outcomes of health care have been improved. This implies that the patients’ desires and aspirations are catered for regardless of their native language and race (Ameli, 2015).

Besides, through face to face interactions of the professionals and the patients, this has boosted the efficiency in the deliverance of essential services to the patients hence results to the quality and outcomes of the healthcare system. Nonetheless, cultural healthcare system can help throw off disparities associated with race as well as ethnicity (Gastañaduy et al., 2016). This is because these experts possess the relevant skills that they can use to exert their feelings on articulated patients regardless of their race and ethnic background.

Ultimately, various policy strategies have been enacted to ensure that healthcare set up is geared towards achieving some specific objective of desire. They include: provision of pertinent training on issues about cross-cultural communication and cultural competency to health experts, creation of policies that can lower the barriers on language to the care of patients as well as administrative principles that must be followed amicably to ensure proper servicing (Gastañaduy et al., 2016).

Nevertheless, some activities can be initiated by the public health to enhance vaccination process of measles, and these can be done in a successive step. Firstly, the outbreak control team should assemble themselves in readiness for the task at hand about fulfilling the community welfare. The affected areas should be determined carefully to ensure that better coverage of data is gotten within the area prone to measles as well as the surrounding areas (Holzmann et al., 2016). This implies that the response on the outbreak requires proper planning and preemptive team to help in the understandability of the context. To elaborate, the response team are made up of professionals and various stakeholders from different settings like local, national health department and also local sectors. Ultimately, since agent response teams establish and maintains partnership among themselves, acute agent planning and routinely training can boost the members’ effectiveness just as per the occurrence of the outbreak. Moreover, in terms of public health capacities of infrastructure such as surveillance quality, these groups of people can help in the determination of necessity of resources to be added, they also allocate duties for the respective members, implement strategies as well as give updates to some essential groups of persons within the community (Gastañaduy et al., 2016). And therefore, because of the ability to be diverse and mobilize committee members to their stipulated tasks, this helps in arrival at the quick decision making that is critically reliable.

After that, surveillance of the region should be enhanced, and this means that some additional case studies may be found to help in the analysis of data. Basically, monitoring is essential in that it ensures that the diagnosis of a given disease is made on time. Generally, the core value of surveillance enhancement is to create a broader consciousness of local transmission (Ameli, 2015). And these could be done through alerting various institutions as well as organizations on chances of spread of the articulated epidemic disease. However, epidemiological alerts could be helpful when sent to multiple bodies concerned with issues on health. Ultimately, agile case findings can be conducive in the society in that it could be done through the use of photos to show the rashes as a result of measles to enhance awareness (Ameli, 2015).

In contrary, the felicitous health authorities and the public should be informed to ensure increased awareness on threats of measles. For instance, exposures to risks of measles in large zones result to uncertainty on the risk level and hence in a bid of tracing an individual contact, while giving information about exposure to risk can lead to an improvement in the case-finding (Gastañaduy et al., 2016). And therefore, the public may come to know about the status of the outbreak and also alerts those who are potentially exposed in ways such as briefings of the press, releases of media and advertisements. However, communication through public means is aimed at the provision of consistent and also better data that is opportune and commonly occurs. Elaboratively, the affected sovereignty tends to be reliable in taking a lead of this communication. Generally, when cases have been made to take the lead towards several sovereignties to enclose bordering nations through travel, this may result into sending of appraisal to health bodies to make decisive follow up, and such may include International Health Regulation (IHR) assessments.

Also, the case-patients should be educated effectively about the transmission mode of measles as well as the metrics to lower the spread of measles. This implies that the infectious period, transmission mode as well as mitigation factors on the range of the articulated disease can be made aware to caregivers through education (Holzmann et al., 2016). This is usually done through the use of fact sheets, and that is, printed articles. The purpose of phoning can also help to educate as well as give guidance to the people within the society. Phoning allows individuals to determine how medical evaluation should be done in case someone gets affected and this could entail making a call to those in charge in the hospitals so that the already infected patient to be isolated from the rest of the people within a given setting.

However, apt case management should be exercised, for instance, proper administration of the articulated vitamin, that is, vitamin A. Furthermore, specimens should be obtained by the specialists in charge from the laboratories for affirmation and detection of a virus (Gastañaduy et al., 2016). Ultimately, for the assertion on the existence of traces of measles, a clinical specimen is obtained for detection of the little virus whereby, genotyping is done after complete elimination. Therefore, an epidemiological study can help one come to determine the source of measles outbreak, distinguish among different chains of transmission of the virus. And also, it can bring into a distinction of the wild-type virus and strains of the vaccine better understanding of the measles disease.

Therefore, in the presence of the virus, various control activities should be implemented to limit the transmission of the virus. After that, the persons who have not been administered with the vaccine should be administered with the measles vaccine. However, those susceptible to the measles vaccine should be offered post-exposure prophylaxis, and this is usually done by the experts assessing immunity about cases of contacts (Gastañaduy et al., 2016). Just after detection of a case, there is a need for determination of further transmission of risk, this begins by identification of persons who are exposed to the risk of measles, and they could probably gain from post-exposure prophylaxis. And such people include unvaccinated pregnant women, inborn as well as individuals whose immune systems have been impaired becomes a superiorly considered. Furthermore, rapidly assessing factors contributing to the spread of the virus at a topical level, proper evaluation on coverage of the existent vaccination data especially in the localities affected should be brought into completion

Literally, for implementation effectiveness, isolation of the dominantly affected persons, experts should offer quarantine services as well as use exclusionary behavior on the community if the need arises (Gastañaduy et al., 2016). Moreover, detailed information about the cases should be gathered and response outbroken. These include collecting data on epidemiological, clinical as well as demographic especially during sessions of interviews and these are typically made to completion within two days after identification of case. Succinctly, at the standard point, data of a case may be gathered through the use of investigation forms about measles. Thereafter the gotten data are coded in the available database (Ameli, 2015). Therefore, these help in determination of the breadth of vaccination and responses on activities that were provided quickly (Holzmann et al., 2016).

Lastly, the experts should carry out analysis about the outbreak and summarize the data adequately, these include data analysis on surveillance availed as well as data on coverage of measles vaccine to provide facts about population exempt gaps that need effective actions on public health. After that, such results should be disseminated to relevant stakeholders in need of the information. Analysis of the outbreak needs to be done at the end. These involve proper learning of the outbreak of measles, that is portraying gaps of undertreated people through immunization and such may require many preventable efforts on target group as well as strategizing on the documentation of responses about the spread of measles (Holzmann et al., 2016).

Nevertheless, the programs initiated touched the four important categories, and these include Surveillance quality, population immunity, program performance as well as threat assessment (Ameli, 2015). To begin with population immunity, these involve measles vulnerability evaluation through the use of Subnational vaccination coverage data (Holzmann et al., 2016). And this involved administration through services that are routine for the first dose. Therefore, this was followed closely by a second vaccine and coverage accomplished during the measles Supplemental Immunization operations, and this was done three years ago. However, such indication also encloses neither the proportionality of the suspected cases of measles with the invisible status of vaccination nor the unvaccinated ones.

Secondly, on surveillance quality, this implies the ability to evaluate a given area to find and affirm cases quickly and accurately (Gastañaduy et al., 2016). Therefore, such indications may include; the exact proportion of measles suspected instances for enough research as well as the proportion of facts with enough specimen collection. On the other hand, program performance addresses assessment on core aspects of routinely immunization entities as well as their trends on coverage data. Lastly, threat assessment, is concerned about the factors that may induce risks of exposure of virus of measles and it’s out sending in a given population. Therefore, such indicators may include cases of the reported disease among specific target group like age group.

 

 

References

Ameli, J. (2015). Communicable diseases and outbreak control. Turkish journal of emergency medicine, 15, 20-26.

Gastañaduy, P. A., Budd, J., Fisher, N., Redd, S. B., Fletcher, J., Miller, J., … & Fowler, B. (2016). A measles outbreak in an under immunized Amish community in Ohio. New England Journal of Medicine, 375(14), 1343-1354.

Holzmann, H., Hengel, H., Tenbusch, M., & Doerr, H. W. (2016). Eradication of measles: remaining challenges. Medical microbiology and immunology, 205(3), 201-208.