Health Protection: What Is It?
One of the three areas of focus for public health work is health protection . Health protection professionals strive to shield persons, communities, and outbreaks of infectious illnesses as well as non infectious environmental dangers from harm. Health protection services are primarily a response service that handles epidemics and situations However, they also keep an eye on the emergence of new diseases in the population, track how vaccinations affect various diseases, support health care professionals' training, and address hospital acquired infections and antibiotic resistance.
A Health Protection Team (HPT) is a multidisciplinary team that works closely with colleagues in Public Health England (PHE), environmental health departments, hospital microbiologists, infection and prevention control teams, general practitioners, community specialists, and educational institutions. The team members include nurses, practitioners, doctors, surveillance, and administrative staff. These teams, which are responsible for their locality, are spread out throughout the nation. Every HPT has an on-call service that responds to notifications of infectious diseases and any demands pertaining to health protection, while also offering assistance to medical professionals and the general public. There are emergency planning and strategic health protection roles at the federal level.
Work Areas for Health Protection
Control of communicable diseases
Environmental health Radiation and chemical risks
Emergency Response, Preparedness, and Resilience (EPRR)
Crucial Ideas for Health Protection
Organising and getting ready
Early detection and prevention
Examination and management
broader leadership and management in public health
These guidelines are applicable in all situations, whether they involve cases, issues, outbreaks, or incidents. The concept of introspection is central to the fourth leadership principle. This entails analysing the events of specific cases, incidents, or outbreaks and synthesising the scientific and procedural lessons discovered. This can then be applied to future work improvements and ongoing professional growth. It also entails sharing these insights with the general public, other stakeholders, and health experts.
Control of Communicable Diseases
Handling inquiries regarding infectious diseases, locating cases , tracking down contacts, stopping the spread of the disease, and managing or controlling circumstances are all part of the daily work. Enhanced or backward contract tracing, or movements made in the time before symptoms appear, might be used to find the origins of an infection. This is frequently applied to infections caused by health activity.
Collected data is used to create surveillance. For instance, registered medical practitioners in England and Wales are required by law to report suspected cases of specific infectious diseases to their local health protection team or local authority in the event of notifiable infectious diseases. When a laboratory in England conducts primary diagnostic work, it is required to notify Public Health England (PHE).When a laboratory in England confirms a notifiable organism, they are required to notify Public Health England (PHE) in order to fulfil their primary diagnostic function. Every week, PHE compiles these notifications and releases analysis on regional and national patterns.
You must be logged in to post a comment.