Following the coronavirus pandemic, the risk of new infectious diseases is certainly much more important in the general consciousness. In recent months, for example, much attention has been paid to outbreaks of scarlet fever, mysterious hepatitis and bird flu. And of course, there is the current international outbreak of monkeypox that, as of Friday, only 106 cases have been reported in the UK.
To better control similar outbreaks in the future, rapid detection is “essential”, which is why medical surveillance is needed, Professor Malcolm Bennett, an expert on emerging and zoonotic diseases at the University of Nottingham, told Express.co.uk.
He said: “In the UK and many other countries we have this list of notifiable diseases.
“These are diseases that you have to report to the authorities if you diagnose them, whether in animals or humans.”
In the UK, this list includes diseases such as anthrax, leprosy, rabies, scarlet fever and whooping cough, to name a few.
The World Health Organization (WHO), on the other hand, has a different system.
Professor Bennett explains: “The WHO’s method of doing this is not to have a list of notifiable diseases, but to say, ‘If you see anything new, you must let us know so that we can help you investigate and find out what it is. ‘”
In practice, however, the WHO is not always informed.
Professor Bennet continued: “We have to make it real, instead of something on a web page.”
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We could even use medical surveillance methods that take advantage of the kind of approaches that advertisers and marketers use to monitor consumer trends, Professor Bennet noted.
He added: “It is possible to detect a new infectious syndrome that is happening by looking at sales of painkillers, for example.
“So if you suddenly sell more aspirin than before, that could indicate that there are a lot of people with a fever, and then you think,‘ that’s interesting, we don’t usually have a lot of people with a fever right now. of the year. ‘
“There are many ways [of surveilling for possible outbreaks] and people are thinking about it all.
“But the key to everything is how you can pick up something so new as soon as possible, so you can then figure out what it is and decide how you will control it.”