Frontiers in public health
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Front Public Health · Jan 2019
Uptake of Recommended Vaccines and Its Associated Factors Among Malaysian Pilgrims During Hajj and Umrah 2018.
This study aimed to assess the uptake of recommended vaccines and to identify the factors associated with the vaccines' uptake among Malaysian Hajj and Umrah pilgrims. A cross-sectional survey among Malaysian Hajj and Umrah pilgrims in 2018. The uptake of the recommended vaccines was surveyed through an anonymous self-administered questionnaire to pilgrims attending a pre-departure Hajj/Umrah orientation course. ⋯ Gender, marital status and occupation were the common predictors associated with vaccines uptake. The vaccination uptake among Malaysian Hajj and Umrah pilgrims is low and declining from previous years. Educating the pilgrims toward vaccine uptake is essential and exploring the barriers for vaccination.
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Front Public Health · Jan 2019
ReviewYou're It-You've Got to Save Someone: Immediate Responders, Not Bystanders.
Recurring disasters and life-threatening emergencies mandate that communities across the world be adequately prepared to prevent, respond, and recover from these events. Experiences throughout the world with mass casualty incidents and other disasters have increasingly highlighted the vital role that "active bystanders"-persons at the scene of an event who step forward to help-can play in preventing, containing, reporting, saving lives, decreasing morbidity, and increasing resilience. This paper seeks to emphasize the importance of the public in response to emergencies. ⋯ Immediate responders can and do play a valuable and unique role in reducing mortality, morbidity, and suffering from emergency events. While some cultures and countries have a long history of engaging the public as critical in an emergency response, others do not. The challenge is how best to increase the number of individuals who are motivated, prepared and ready to respond appropriately when they find themselves at the scene of an active shooter, bombing, hurricane, earthquake, tornado, fire, vehicle crash, or other life-threatening emergency.
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Front Public Health · Jan 2019
ReviewGeospatial Science and Point-of-Care Testing: Creating Solutions for Population Access, Emergencies, Outbreaks, and Disasters.
Objectives: (a) To understand how to integrate geospatial concepts when implementing point-of-care testing (POCT); (b) to facilitate emergency, outbreak, and disaster preparedness and emergency management in healthcare small-world networks; (c) to enhance community resilience by using POCT in tandem with geographic information systems (GISs) and other geospatial tools; and (d) to advance crisis standards of care at points of need, adaptable and scalable for public health practice in limited-resource countries and other global settings. Content: Visual logistics help integrate and synthesize POCT and geospatial concepts. The resulting geospatial solutions presented here comprise: (1) small-world networks and regional topography; (2) space-time transformation, hubs, and asset mapping; (3) spatial and geospatial care paths™; (4) GIS-POCT; (5) isolation laboratories, diagnostics isolators, and mobile laboratories for highly infectious diseases; (6) alternate care facilities; (7) roaming POCT-airborne, ambulances, space, and wearables; (8) connected and wireless POCT outside hospitals; (9) unmanned aerial vehicles; (10) geospatial practice-demographic care unit resource scoring, geographic risk assessment, and national POCT policy and guidelines; (11) the hybrid laboratory; and (12) point-of-careology. ⋯ POCT-enabled spatial grids can map sentinel cases and establish geographic limits of epidemics for ring vaccination. Impact: Geospatial solutions generate inherently optimal and logical placement of POCT conceptually, physically, and temporally as a means to improve crisis response and spatial resilience. If public health professionals, geospatial scientists, and POCT specialists join forces, new collaborative teamwork can create faster response and higher impact during disasters, complex crises, outbreaks, and epidemics, as well as more efficient primary, urgent, and emergency community care.
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Front Public Health · Jan 2019
Exploring Women Healthcare Leaders' Perceptions on Barriers to Leadership in Greek Context.
Background: Gender inequalities have been identified as important derailment factors for health workforce and health system sustainability. Literature holds responsible a list of gendered barriers faced by female health workforce. However, there is a gap in the evidence based research on women leaders' own perceptions of barriers to leading positions advancement. ⋯ Conclusion: This exploratory study reports the perceived barriers of women leaders in pursuing leading positions within Greek healthcare context. The findings point mainly to organizational and socio-cultural related barriers potentially aggravated by country's unfortunate current economic turbulence. Further extensive research is required to establish grounded conclusions and better inform education and policy makers in developing gender sensitive strategies to sustainable health workforce development.
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Background: Telemedicine, or healthcare delivery from a distance, has evolved over the past 50 years and helped alter health care delivery to patients around the globe. Its integration into numerous domains has permitted high quality care that transcends obstacles of geographic distance, lack of access to health care providers, and cost. Ultrasound is an effective diagnostic tool and its application within telemedicine ("tele-ultrasound") has advanced substantially in recent years, particularly in high-income settings. ⋯ The most common outcome measures were image quality, telemedicine system requirements, diagnostic accuracy, and changes in clinical management. Limitations: The studies included were of poor quality with a dearth of randomized control trials and with significant between study heterogeneity which resulted in incomplete data and made cross study comparison difficult. Conclusions and Implications of Key Findings: Low-quality evidence suggests that ultrasound images acquired in resource-limited settings and transmitted using a telemedical platform to an expert interpreter are of satisfactory quality and value for clinical diagnosis and management.