Communicable Disease Control

Acute Communicable Disease Control

Communicable disease control in complex emergencies.

Control of diphtheria: guidance for consultants in communicable disease control

242 VOL 2 NO 4 DECEMBER 1999 Introduction Current guidelines for the management of diphtheria in Europe were prepared by the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region in response to the re-emergence of diphtheria in the former Soviet Union1. A recent incident in London, in which a laboratory diagnosed a case of diphtheria in error and caused a false alarm2, led us to review the guidelines...

Communication and communicable disease control: lessons from Ebola virus disease.

In her article “Ebola, Team Communication, and Shame: But Shame on Whom?” Shannon (2015) describes communication failures that contributed to delayed diagnosis—and, arguably, to the death—of the first patient in the United States to present with Ebola virus disease (EVD) (Shannon 2015). Contrary to her belief that medical errors due to communication failure are a particular problem in the Unite...

SPECIAL THEME: COMMUNICABLE DISEASE Back pain, a communicable disease?

Background Back pain (BP) is a frequent disorder affecting currently up to 40% of adults in Western Europe. Most of it is said to be ‘non-specific’, i.e. lacking an obvious patho-anatomical explanation. It is seldom the consequence of a contagious disease caused by microorganisms. This does not exclude it from being communicable if ‘communicable’ is to refer to something being transmitted by sh...