Communicable Disease Control

Today was a very gloomy day and we learned about communicable disease control(CDC) which started only at 10.10 or something around there. Huhu :(. Mr. Jamil b. Osman who is the PPKP of CDC took the class. This is what he explained about:

Mission of CDC:

• Prevent or control communicable diseases

Duties of CDC:

• Surveillance record
• Analyzing collected data
• Investigate and detect the cause of a case
• Planning steps of control of disease
• Specimen collection
• Preparation of case report
• Perform other orders from higher authorities

Field of duty:

• Food and water borne disease
• Vector borne disease
• Disease which can be eliminated by vaccination
• Tuberculosis and leprosy
• Sexually transmissible disease
• HIV/AIDS
• Disease transmitted by animals
• International health
• Newly discovered disease

He later explained about disease surveillance system which is a very brief one. He took the example of acute gastroenteritis(AGE) to explain about it as AGE and influenza like illness(ILI) are common in Sik. He said that it is a simple process where he collects data about the number of cases of AGE from from 5 places which is the Sik Hospital, out patient department, health clinic Jeniang, health clinic Gulau, and health clinic Bentong weekly. He plots the data in line graph and monitors the patern of the disease. There is a mean line on the graph where if the number of cases go above the mean is indicative of an outbreak. For ILI data are taken from another extra place besides the other 5 which is from a private clinic(Clinic Dr.Azhar).

Next, he spoke about notification of any communicable disease case. Cases which should be informed in 24 hours is cholera, dengue, AGE, and ebola and cases which should be informed in 1 week duration is like tuberculosis, leprosy and diphtheria. He said the cases will be notified by phone, form and e-notifikasi. Then, he opened e-notifikasi and showed us on how to fill up a case and emphasized about how verification is done and how important is it. After verification, it will be sent to IKK to verify again and later to the DHO to approve it and the case will be registered.

After that, he spoke about what happens once there is an outbreak. They will first set a purpose and an objective for the investigation of an outbreak. Next they will form a committee to run the investigation. The committee comprises of a operation room, investigation team, control and prevention team, health promotion, enforcement team, and case detection team.
Before he ended his speech he explained about the steps of disease control:

• closing down the area
• removal of contaminated food
• isolation or treatment of the diseased individual
• recovery of any part of a building which is suspected to be the cause of the disease
• cleaning of the environment
• health education

Thank you.

prepared by Narresh.