Home and community care: living positively with HIV/AIDS

This guide was written with the user in mind: the person living with HIV/AIDS, the caregiver whether you are a close relative or friend, home care assistant or professional nurse. Concerns and concepts related to care are threaded throughout the book, so as to highlight the psychological and social aspects of care. Attempts have been made to simpilfy the language to meet the needs of all caregivers. However, some technical information about HIV/AIDS has been included, since many persons living with the problem have a considerable amount of technical information about the disease and its management

Fever with rash illness surveillance English-speaking Caribbean & Surinam 1991-1992

The English-speaking Caribbean and Suriname have targeted measles for elimination by the end of 1995, One of the main strategies is to have in place an active and sensitive system of surveillance at regional and national levels so that all suspected cases of measles can be detected, investigated and analysed, and appropriate control measures implemented to stop transmission (AU)

Dengue activity in Puerto Rico

The laboratory-based dengue surveillance program in Puerto Rico aims to provide early and precise information to public health officials on four aspects of increased dengue activity: time, location, virus stereotype, and disease severity. The Dengue Branch, San Juan Laboratories (SJL) of the National Center for Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control, receives blood specimens from government clinics, public and private hospitals, and physicians' offices throughout Puerto Rico. These specimens are sent directly or collected locally and transported to SJL by personnel of the Community Hygiene Division (HAFI, for its initials in Spanish) of the Puerto Rico Health Department (PRHD). All serum specimens are tested for anti-dengue IgM to a mixture of four dengue virus antigens, by IgM antibody capture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (MAC-ELISA). All specimens that test positive by MAC-ELISA are further evaluated with an IgG-ELISA to determine whether the infection is primary or secondary. Up to 125 early acute-phase samples per week are processed in C636 mosquito cell cultures for attempted virus isolation. In addition, sera from all patients with haemorrhagic manifestations and all patients from outside Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, if collected fewer than 6 days after onset of illness, are injected into Toxorhynchites mosquitoes. Dengue virus-infected cell cultures or tissues from inoculated mosquitoes (AU)

Leprosy situation in the world and multidrug therapy coverage

Leprosy is still a major public health problem in most countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Leprosy patients with disabilities continue to be an important cause for concern and a socioeconomic burden in these countries. However, compared with what was observed about a decade ago, the leprosy situation has vastly improved, both in quantitative and qualitative terms. This largely results from the introduction of multidrug therapy (MDT) in the early 1980s. The present report is essentially an update on the progress made since October 1990 (AU)

Toxic hypoglycemic syndrome Jamaica, 1989-1991

In January and February 1991, the health officer in the parish of St. Ann, Jamaica, received reports of eight persons with Toxic Hypoglycemic Syndrome (THS), an illness associated with consumption of unripe ackee fruit and, possibly, renta yam; two cases were fatal. On July 25, the Jamaican Ministry of Health (JMH) contacted the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for assistance in investigating the continuous occurence of THS; the collaborative JMH and CDC epidemiologic investigation focused on characterizing the epidemiology of THS in Jamaica and assessing the role of ackee fruit, renta yams, and other factors (AU)

Update: international task force for disease eradication

In 1998, a decade after the successful eradication of smallpox, the International Task Force for Disease Eradication (ITFDE) was formed to systematically evaluate the potential for global eradicability of candidate diseases, identify specific barriers to their eradication that might be sumountable, and promote eradication efforts. This group includes representatives from the World Health Organization, United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, United Nations Development Project, the World Bank and the Rockefeller Foundation. In its first two meetings in April and October 1989, the ITFDE determined that two of eight diseases examined were eradicable and three others were candidates for elimination of transmission or clinical sympthoms. In its third and fourth meetings in August 1990 and June 1991, the ITFDE evaluated the potential eradicability of seven other diseases. This report summarizes the results of the third and fourth meetings (AU)

Cholera in Belize

From early 1991, shortly after the first cases of cholera occured in Peru in South America, cholera preparedness activities began in Belize. These were intensified when cholera spread to Central America and affected the neighbouring countries of Mexico and Guatemala. Physicians were sent to Guatemala for "hands-on" training in cholera treatment. Surveillance was intensified with diarrhoea being monitored in the under-5 and over-5 year age group. Case-investigation forms were developed, laboratory capability was strengthened and personnel retrained at CAREC Lab Diagnosis Workshops. Water, sanitation and education programs were stepped up. Several workshops at different levels were also held to sensitize and educate the public and health workers. Finally, a cholera preparedness plan was developed with assistance from PAHO and presented at a conference in Washington in December 1991 to try and mobilize additional resources for the fight against cholera (AU)

The benefits and limitations of sentinel surveillance data on gastroenteritis in epidemic investigation

Sentinel surveillance playes an important role in the early detection of disease outbreaks. In Jamaica, information is collected weekly on gastroenteritis (GE), fever, and measles. Recently, GE data has been divided into cases in under 5 year olds and over 5 year olds in order to increase the system's sensitivity towards detection of the introduction of cholera. Investigation of a recent epidemic of gastroenteritis at Cornwall Regional Hospital, Montego Bay, St. James Parish reinforced to us the importance of sentinel data collection for detection of outbreaks and illustrated the usefullness of age division of GE data, but also alerted us to the need to monitor the accuracy of case definitions for sentinel reports (AU)

Diarrhoeal diseases surveillance in Trinidad and Tobago

Between July 28th and December 28th, 1991, 2,935 cases of diarrhoeal illness were reported to the National Surveillance Unit of the Ministry of Health, in response to the intensified surveillance activities of the Cholera Preparedness Programme. The cases notified included 1,656 children less than five years of age (56.4 percent) and 1,279 persons over age five. The average number of reported cases per week was 133 with a range of 62-202 cases. A review of certain laboratory indicators was recently undertaken in order to assess the ease with which cholera would spread locally if introduced into Trinidad and Tobago. This analysis is based on data produced by the Trinidad Public Health Laboratory (AU)