Infrastructure and Surveillance in Global Health

Infrastructure and Surveillance in Global Health

Infrastructure and Surveillance

Preventing diseases is among the initiatives set by the World health organization towards ensuring global health. Governments are tasked with preventing the causes of various health complications around their populations. This is achieved by protecting the populations against health-hazardous environments (“Environmental Health | Healthy People 2020”, 2020). The emergence of infectious diseases arises among the interactions of populations around the globe and may spread quickly through movements such as travel from one country to another. Infrastructural development of healthcare facilities is also an initiative set to improve the general health status of the populations of the world.

Improving the infrastructure and surveillance of healthcare systems and global health status is majorly meant to prevent the emergence and spread of infectious diseases. For instance, the occurrence of Ebola in West Africa would result in the infection spreading to other countries if the health of the nation is not monitored and maintained (“Public Health Infrastructure | Healthy People 2020”, 2020). Governments are urged to provide and equip their healthcare departments with an infrastructural facility such as prevention measures, immunizations, health monitoring systems, and national health awareness. The health departments should also be capacitive enough to notice and respond to health issues in the nation (Wolicki et al., 2016). This can be achieved through the use of modern health surveillance facilities to capture the health status of the populations of a country and to manage a responsive health information system.

Global health could also be achieved through the eradication of health hazard around populations. Through research, global health organizations should be able to identify possible causes of infectious diseases and prevent the occurrence (Wolicki et al., 2016). Educating the public on disease prevention skills could help improve health status among risked populations.

References

Environmental Health | Healthy People 2020. Healthypeople.gov. (2020). Retrieved 27 February 2020, from https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/environmental-health.

Public Health Infrastructure | Healthy People 2020. Healthypeople.gov. (2020). Retrieved 27 February 2020, from https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/public-health-infrastructure.

Wolicki, S., Nuzzo, J., Blazes, D., Pitts, D., Iskander, J., & Tappero, J. (2016). Public Health Surveillance: At the Core of the Global Health Security Agenda. Health Security, 14(3), 185-188. https://doi.org/10.1089/hs.2016.0002