Category: Uncategorized

Throughout the history of public health, effectively communicating about health risks with a broad range of constituents has proven a fundamental and enduring challenge. John Snow, for example, faced local officials who were ‘‘reluctant to believe’’ his claim that the epicenter of the 1854 cholera outbreak in London was the Broad Street water pump, and…

The subsequent variations across the health-care systems of countries in the region reflect diverse political and economic trajectories. Generally, health-care systems have experienced difficulties since the 1980s, exacerbated by their countries’ shift to market economies (McKee et al., 2002). The political and economic transition as well as declining government financing and support for reform has…

The pretransition health-care system in the former Soviet Union, also known as the Semashko model (Nikolai Semashko (1874–1949) was a member of the Bolshevik Party who became USSR’s People’s Commissar of Public Health in 1923 and was instrumental in setting up the Soviet model of health care.), sought to provide universal access through an extensive…

  Because estrogens are prothrombotic, there are theoretical reasons for predicting that women taking exogenous estrogens in the form either of oral contraceptive pills (OCPs) or hormone replacement therapy (HRT) would have an increased risk of occlusive cardiovascular events. This prediction was certainly fulfilled for first-generation OCPs, which had relatively high levels of estrogen. It…

Although all regions in the world suffer from the epidemic of road traffic injuries, the low and middle-income countries bear a disproportionate burden of the injuries and fatalities (Ameratunga et al., 2006). According to World Health Organization data (Peden et al., 2004), these regions account for about 85% of traffic deaths each year. The overall…

The human cost of transition has been enormous. The region has experienced dramatic changes in its demographic and health indicators, which compare unfavorably with the indicators in Western Europe and the countries in central Europe. In the post-war period, the Soviet system made considerable progress in establishing universal health and education systems, implementing universal immunization…

Infections caused by microbes that have an animal reservoir (especially wild animal) or are found in the environment (soil, water, vegetation) are difficult to contain and to keep under containment with currently available tools. Even if an effective vaccine is available, as there are for the flaviviral infections, Japanese encephalitis and yellow fever, elimination of…

The appearance of and spread of infection with HIV has had a profound effect on the burden from many other infectious diseases, most notably TB. The interaction between HIV/AIDS and TB is bidirectional, with each making the other worse. Infection with M. tuberculosis upregulates HIV replication, increases viral load, accelerates the decline of CD4 count,…

As noted above, presence of antibodies because of past infection with one dengue serotype can predispose to more severe infection if exposure to a different serotype occurs. However, many infections are followed by long-lasting, sometimes lifelong, immunity. When infection with hepatitis A occurs in young children, infection is often mild or asymptomatic and often not…

During the past 50 years remarkable gains have been achieved with the control of many infectious diseases. At the same time, new and previously unknown pathogens have emerged, and some, like HIV, have spread globally killing millions of individuals, disrupting societies, and reshaping the demographics of countries and regions. In addition, infectious diseases previously thought…