The occurrence of natural disasters renders the victims vulnerable to communicable diseases. Calamities like floods, droughts, earthquakes and hurricanes occur annually around the world which alter the disease patterns. The outbreak of communicable diseases doesn’t take into account borders but rather is being spread like fire if control measures are not applied immediately (General Health District, 2011).
Various health policies have been formulated to curb the spread of Communicable diseases also referred to as infectious infections. Societal practices such as overcrowding in the shopping centers, constant movement of people that leads to culmination of rural camps, habit of using the day care facilities service, and involvement in unsafe sexual practices.
Controls of such diseases involve personal initiatives in maintaining high standard of hygiene and safe water treatment methods. A clean environment coupled with good health system forms the foundation of eradicating communicable diseases. These diseases are mainly either vector-borne or water-borne (The Johns Hopkins and The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2011).
The commonly applied strategies in controlling the outbreaks of infectious diseases are reduction of mortality rate due to proactive measures that ensures early detection and consequent treatment; another ideology is to encourage preventive activities which will in the long run reduce rampant spread of such diseases.
These should be applied without much bureaucracy. Quick response is the principle to be adhered to incase of an outbreak. This helps in curbing the impending epidemic. The emergency program of immunization also plays a vital role in controlling the communicable diseases (The Johns Hopkins and The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2011).
Communicable diseases need to be controlled to curb the spread to an epidemic level. The proposed or suggested interventions will include fields related to water and sanitation, hygiene, health care. Other factors to be considered are the cost, implementation pace, feasibility of the program and its adherence to the human rights issues.
The program should not be in conflict with the culture of the victims or the target populations. The program design includes the rapid assessment stage usually after the occurrence of some kind of disaster. It’s a period of data gathering and snap decision making. The in-depth assessment helps in comprehensive planning of the control program.
At this stage, the background information of the affected population is sought together with the magnitude of the epidemic. The program should include some long term plan on how to reduce the effect of such epidemics in case they re-occur (The Johns Hopkins and The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies).
The implementation of the program calls for prioritizing of the intervention measures used in deciding what to be carried first or last and includes the cost, staff availability, extent of the problem, implementation technicalities (The Johns Hopkins and The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2011).
The goal of a good control program should be to prevent and reduce mortality and morbidity rates as well as spread of the infectious diseases. Isolation of the victims is a violation of their right to get access to medical care freely, freedom of movement and association which are also infringed. Such people need our support for them to feel the part of the society; in its turn, it enhances recovery or healing process (Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2011).
References
Bloomberg School of Public Health. (2011). Web.
General Health District. (2001) Web.
The Johns Hopkins and The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. (2011). Public health guide for emergencies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.