Books on the topic 'ILLNESS SPREAD'

There is wide-spread recognition that people who struggle with mental illness often face negative reactions from others or systems with which they interact, and often internalize these reactions. This volume explores the many faces of the stigma of mental illness through a series of carefully chosen foci. The book begins with a series of chapters that explore models of stigma, and how stigma can present itself in different contexts such as health care, the workplace and postsecondary settings. The measurement of stigma is highlighted as an area of recent development, that is critical for evidence-based programming. A third part of the volume presents examples of innovative interventions that reduce the stigma of mental illness. Overall, the book provides a theoretically current, conceptually rich, and yet practical approach to the issues it covers, and includes a number of practical suggestions and tools for the reader from a series of global leaders.

Q fever is a wide spread illness affecting wild and domestic animals and man. The etiological agent Coxiella burnetii, has both a wild life and domestic animal cycle. In mammals, infection localizes to the endometrium and the mammary glands. The organism is reactivated during pregnancy reaching high concentrations in the placenta. At the time of parturition the organism is aerosolized. Inhalation of Coxiella burnetii by a susceptible animal results in Q fever. In man, Q fever may be acute (self limited febrile illness, pneumonia, hepatitis) or chronic (mostly endocarditis, but also osteomyelitis, endovascular infection, hepatitis [can be both acute and chronic] and Q fever in pregnancy). Abortion and stillbirth are manifestations of Q fever in domestic animals and in animal models of disease (such as a mouse model of Q fever in pregnancy ). A vaccine is available for abattoir workers, veterinarians and others at high risk for acquiring Q fever.

This chapter describes food safety, in the context of both specific food products and entire food systems. The chapter describes various elements of food safety, how unsafe food causes adverse health effects, and what measures can be taken to prevent and control foodborne illness. The chapter emphasizes that public health surveillance for foodborne disease is the key to hazard identification. In particular, it emphasizes the role of public health surveillance as a tool to evaluate the effectiveness of our food safety systems, and to guide the development of prevention and control measures. The chapter describes in detail preventing food contamination, controlling amplification or spread of foodborne disease agents, and reducing or eliminating hazards.

This article examines why palliative care remains inaccessible to most persons with serious illness, citing the lack of a successful social marketing platform directed to consumers as a primary reason. It argues that the growth of palliative care has been hindered by the failure of palliative care professionals to consider the basic principles of social marketing in early language and messaging. The article first provides a historical background on the development of modern hospice care and of palliative care before turning to a discussion of how palliative care has failed to generate widespread public support and engagement. It then considers how early messaging by palliative care professionals hindered referrals to palliative care by other health-care professionals and concludes by explaining how recent attempts to use principles of audience research and targeted social marketing have led to the rapid spread and uptake of palliative care services in the United States.

The skin may be adversely affected by any serious medical illness, often as a secondary process related to infection, trauma, nutritional deficiencies, and other factors. Disease-specific skin involvement occurs commonly in some conditions, and is best characterized in cancer. Skin of the patient with advanced cancer is unique compared to other organs of the body. While the sequela of metastatic spread to internal organs often is replacement of normal tissue and resultant organ failure, widespread replacement of skin with a neoplasm is uncommon. Yet, even a local disruption of skin integrity can cause deterioration in the quality of life, debilitation, and even mortality. Other aspects of neoplastic disorders affecting the skin discussed in this chapter include accumulation of abnormally produced metabolites, adverse effects to treatment, and paraneoplastic syndromes. It is important to give dermatological aspects of disease their appropriate attention, because these can be the ones that may be dealt with efficiently and improve the patient’s quality of life.

With its growing recognition by the early decades of the twentieth century, palliative medicine was moving from the margins to a more central place within medicine. Much had been achieved and there was growing evidence of palliative care’s successes around the world. At the same time, there were ongoing concerns about the quality of the evidence base to support its practices. There were questions about the relationship between palliative care and end-of-life care. There was also the challenge of delivering good care to all who might need it in the face of serious and life-threatening illness in an era of population growth and ageing. There seemed to be many ways to conceptualize and deliver palliative care. Would this lead to global coverage and spread, and what would be the particular role of palliative medicine within the process? This chapter concludes with reflections on progress to date and challenges for the future.

Curing Madness? focuses on the institutional and non-institutional histories of madness in colonial north India. ‘Madness’ and ‘cure’ are explored as shifting categories which travelled across cultural, medical, national, and regional boundaries, thereby moving beyond asylum-centric histories. It is based on extensive research of archival materials gathered from various repositories in India and abroad. The book focusses on governmental policies, legal processes, everyday patterns of treatment, discipline and resistance behind the walls, and individual case histories. It also brings to fore the non-institutional histories of madness. While few ended up in asylums, most people suffering from insanity were cared for by their families and the local vidyas, ojhas, shamans, and pundits. Western medicine denigrated indigenous healing traditions forcing them to reconceptualize and reinvent themselves. The spread and dissemination of Western medical knowledge led to the reshaping of some of the Ayurvedic concepts of mental illness. Based on an examination of Hindi medical advice literature which primarily includes books, pamphlets, and periodicals, the study locates the history of madness within and beyond the asylum walls.

Can a history of cure be more than a history of how disease comes to an end? In 1950s Madras, an international team of researchers demonstrated that antibiotics were effective in treating tuberculosis. But just half a century later, reports out of Mumbai stoked fears about the spread of totally drug-resistant strains of the disease. Had the curable become incurable? Through an anthropological history of tuberculosis treatment in India, Bharat Jayram Venkat examines what it means to be cured, and what it means for a cure to come undone. At the Limits of Cure tells a story that stretches from the colonial period—a time of sanatoria, travel cures, and gold therapy—into a postcolonial present marked by antibiotic miracles and their failures. Venkat juxtaposes the unraveling of cure across a variety of sites: in idyllic hill stations and crowded prisons, aboard ships and on the battlefield, and through research trials and clinical encounters. If cure is frequently taken as an ending (of illness, treatment, and suffering more generally), Venkat provides a foundation for imagining cure otherwise in a world of fading antibiotic efficacy.

The first cases of a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) were identified toward the end of 2019 in Wuhan, China. Over the following months, this virus spread to everywhere in the world. By now no country has been spared the devastation from the loss of lives from the disease (Covid-19) and the economic and social impacts of responses to mitigate the impact of the virus. Our lives in South Africa have been turned upside down as we try to make the best of this bad situation. The 2020 school year was disrupted with closure and then reopening in a phased approach, as stipulated by the Department of Education. This booklet is a collective effort by academics who are Members of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) and other invited scholars to help you appreciate some of the basic scientific facts that you need to know in order to understand the present crisis and the various options available to respond to it. We emphasise that the threat of infectious diseases is not an entirely new phenomenon that has sprung onto the stage out of nowhere. Infectious diseases and pandemics have been with us for centuries, in fact much longer. Scientists have warned us for years of the need to prepare for the next pandemic. Progress in medicine in the course of the 20th century has been formidable. Childhood mortality has greatly decreased almost everywhere in the world, thanks mainly, but not only, to the many vaccines that have been developed. Effective drugs now exist for many deadly diseases for which there were once no cures. For many of us, this progress has generated a false sense of security. It has caused us to believe that the likes of the 1918 ‘Spanish flu’ pandemic, which caused some 50 million deaths around the world within a span of a few months, could not be repeated in some form in today’s modern world. The Covid-19 pandemic reminds us that as new cures for old diseases are discovered, new diseases come along for which we are unprepared. And every hundred or so years one of these diseases wreaks havoc on the world and interferes severely with our usual ways of going about our lives. Today’s world has become increasingly interconnected and interdependent, through trade, migrations, and rapid air travel. This globalisation makes it easier for epidemics to spread, somewhat offsetting the power of modern medicine. In this booklet we have endeavoured to provide an historical perspective, and to enrich your knowledge with some of the basics of medicine, viruses, and epidemiology. Beyond the immediate Covid-19 crisis, South Africa faces a number of other major health challenges: highly unequal access to quality healthcare, widespread tuberculosis, HIV infection causing AIDS, a high prevalence of mental illness, and a low life expectancy, compared to what is possible with today’s medicine. It is essential that you, as young people, also learn about the nature of these new challenges, so that you may contribute to finding future solutions.

The Handbook of AIDS Psychiatry is a practical guide for AIDS psychiatrists and other mental health professionals as well as for other clinicians who work with persons with HIV and AIDS and a companion book to the Comprehensive Textbook of AIDS Psychiatry (Cohen and Gorman, 2008). The Handbook provides insights into the dynamics of adherence to risk reduction and medical care in persons with HIV and AIDS as well as strategies to improve adherence using a biopsychosocial approach. Psychiatric disorders can accelerate the spread of the virus by creating barriers to risk reduction. Risky sexual behaviors and sharing of needles in intravenous drug users account for the majority of new cases each year. Delirium, dementia, depression, substance dependence, PTSD, and other psychiatric disorders complicate the course and add considerably to the pain and suffering of persons with AIDS. HIV infection and AIDS also are risk factors for suicide, and the rate of suicide has been shown to be higher in persons with AIDS. Psychiatric care can help prevent HIV transmission through recognition and treatment of substance-related disorders, dementia, and mood disorders such as mania. Comprehensive, coordinated care by a multidisciplinary AIDS team, including AIDS psychiatrists, can provide a biopsychosocial approach that is supportive to patients, families, and clinicians. Psychiatric interventions are valuable in every phase of infection, from identification of risk behaviors to anticipation about HIV testing; from exposure and initial infection to confirmation with a positive HIV antibody test; from entry into systems of care to managing complex antiretroviral regimen; from healthy seropositive to onset of first AIDS-related illness; from late stage AIDS to end-stage AIDS and death. There is no comprehensive handbook of AIDS psychiatry to guide clinicians in providing much needed care. The Handbook of AIDS Psychiatry is a practical pocket guide that provides protocols for the recognition and treatment of the psychiatric disorders most prevalent in persons with AIDS and most relevant for primary physicians, infectious disease specialists, and other caregivers because of their impact on health, adherence, behavior, and quality of life.

Influenza is a highly infectious, acute illness which has affected humans and animals since ancient times. Influenza viruses form the Orthomyxoviridae family and are grouped into types A, B, and C on the basis of the antigenic nature of the internal nucleocapsid or the matrix protein. Infl uenza A viruses infect a large variety of animal species, including humans, pigs, horses, sea mammals, and birds, occasionally producing devastating pandemics in humans, such as in 1918 when it has been estimated that between 50–100 million deaths occurred worldwide.There are two important viral surface glycoproteins, the haemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA). The HA binds to sialic acid receptors on the membrane of host cells and is the primary antigen against which a host’s antibody response is targeted. The NA cleaves the sialic acid bond attaching new viral particles to the cell membrane of host cells allowing their release. The NA is also the target of the neuraminidase inhibitor class of antiviral agents that include oseltamivir and zanamivir and newer agents such as peramivir. Both these glycoproteins are important antigens for inducing protective immunity in the host and therefore show the greatest variation.Influenza A viruses are classified into 16 antigenically distinct HA (H1–16) and 9 NA subtypes (N1–9). Although viruses of relatively few subtype combinations have been isolated from mammalian species, all subtypes, in most combinations, have been isolated from birds. Each virus possesses one HA and one NA subtype.Last century, the sudden emergence of antigenically different strains in humans, termed antigenic shift, occurred on three occasions, 1918 (H1N1), 1957 (H2N2) and 1968 (H3N2), resulting in pandemics. The frequent epidemics that occur between the pandemics are as a result of gradual antigenic change in the prevalent virus, termed antigenic drift. Epidemics throughout the world occur in the human population due to infection with influenza A viruses, such as H1N1 and H3N2 subtypes, or with influenza B virus. Phylogenetic studies have led to the suggestion that aquatic birds that show no signs of disease could be the source of many influenza A viruses in other species. The 1918 H1N1 pandemic strain is thought to have arisen as a result of spontaneous mutations within an avian H1N1 virus. However, most pandemic strains, such as the 1957 H2N2, 1968 H3N2 and 2009 pandemic H1N1, are considered to have emerged by genetic re-assortment of the segmented RNA genome of the virus, with the avian and human influenza A viruses infecting the same host.Influenza viruses do not pass readily between humans and birds but transmission between humans and other animals has been demonstrated. This has led to the suggestion that the proposed reassortment of human and avian influenza viruses takes place in an intermediate animal with subsequent infection of the human population. Pigs have been considered the leading contender for the role of intermediary because they may serve as hosts for productive infections of both avian and human viruses, and there is good evidence that they have been involved in interspecies transmission of influenza viruses; particularly the spread of H1N1 viruses to humans. Apart from public health measures related to the rapid identification of cases and isolation. The main control measures for influenza virus infections in human populations involves immunization and antiviral prophylaxis or treatment.

Sweet and Clean? Bodies and Clothes in Early Modern England challenges the widely held beliefs on bathing and cleanliness in the past. For over 30 years, the work of the French historian, George Vigarello, has been hugely influential on early modern European social history, describing an aversion to water and bathing, and the use of linen underwear as the sole cleaning agent for the body. However, these concepts do not apply to early modern England. Sweet and Clean? analyses etiquette and medical literature revealing repeated recommendations to wash or bathe in order to clean the skin. Clean linen was essential for propriety but advice from medical experts was contradictory. Many doctors were convinced that it prevented the spread of contagious diseases, but others recommended flannel for undergarments, and a few thought changing a fever patient’s linens was dangerous. The methodology of material culture helps determine if and how this advice was practised. Evidence from inventories, household accounts and manuals, and surviving linen garments tracks underwear through its life-cycle of production, making, wearing, laundering, and final recycling. Although the material culture of washing bodies is much sparser, other sources, such as the Old Bailey records, paint a more accurate picture of cleanliness in early modern England than has been previously described. The contrasting analyses of linen and bodies reveal what histories material culture best serves. Finally, what of the diseases—plague, smallpox, and typhus—that cleanliness of body and clothes were thought to prevent? Did following early modern medical advice protect people from these illnesses?

The poxviruses are a large family of complex viruses infecting many species of vertebrates as well as arthropods, and members of the three genera Orthopoxvirus, Yatapoxvirus and Parapoxvirus are the cause of sporadic zoonotic infections originating from both wildlife and domestic livestock. Infections of humans are generally associated with localized lesions, regarded as inconvenient rather than life-threatening, although severe illnesses have occurred, particularly in immunologically compromised individuals.The most celebrated of the orthopoxvirus infections is cowpox — a zoonotic infection which has been exploited to the enormous benefit of mankind as it had a pivotal role in the initiation of vaccination strategies that eventually led to the eradication of smallpox. Cowpox occurs only in Eurasia and in recent years it has become evident that infection of cattle is fortuitous and the reservoir of infection is in wild rodents. Monkeypox is another orthopoxvirus causing zoonotic infections in central and west Africa resembling smallpox and is the most serious disease in this category. While monkeypox does not readily spread between people, the potential of the virus to adapt to man is of concern and necessitates sustained surveillance in enzootic areas.The third orthopoxvirus zoonoses of importance is buffalopox in the Indian subcontinent, which is probably a strain of vaccinia that has been maintained in buffalo for at least 30 years following the cessation of vaccination of the human population. Likewise in Brazil, in recent years widespread outbreaks of vaccinia have occurred in milkers and their cattle.Orf virus, the most common of the parapoxviruses to cause zoonotic infection, is largely restricted to those in direct contact with domestic sheep and goats. Generally, infection is associated with a single localized macule affecting the hand which resolves without complications. Infection would appear to be prevalent in all sheep and goat populations and human orf is a relatively common occupational hazard. Sporadic parapoxvirus infections of man also occur following contact with cattle infected with pseudocowpoxvirus, and wildlife, in particular seals.A final serious consideration with the poxvirus zoonoses is the clinical similarity of such infections with smallpox. In view of the potential for smallpox virus to be employed by bio-terrorists there can be an urgency for laboratory confirmation of unexplained zoonotic poxvirus infections. Thus there is a requirement to maintain the capacity for rapid confirmation of poxvirus infections by molecular technique. As representatives of the known poxviruses have all been sequenced, generic and virus specific Polymerase Chain Reactions (PCR) can readily be performed to ensure rapid confirmation of any suspect infection.