Health Emergencies in Large Populations - The H.E.L.P. Course

1. Participants are able to identify communicable diseases prevalent in a crisis situation and describe priorities, opportunities and challenges for control measures

1.1. Participants are able to list the common communicable diseases associated with humanitarian crises and ways to identify the ones to focus on in particular

• Main communicable diseases associated with crisis situations

  • Variations crisis types

  • Influence region and setting in which a crisis takes place

• Classifying communicable diseases

  • Micro-organism responsible for the disease

  • Choice during crisis situations to classify based on modes of transmission

• Comparison of burden of the diseases in terms of micro-organism, transmission, case fatality rate (CFR), mortality, disability

• Difference between endemic and epidemic diseases

  • Diseases with (major) epidemic potential

1.2. Participants are able to identify risk factors that contribute to an increased incidence of communicable diseases

• Environmental determinants favouring transmission

• Absence of preventive health measures

• Deterioration, lack, overwhelmed basic curative care

• Introduction of new pathogens

• Affected population

1.3. Participants are able to identify control measures for communicable diseases and describe challenges in implementation

• The disease dictates the appropriate control measures

• Levels of interventions

  • Classic way to distinguish: Primary, secondary and tertiary preventive measures

  • Interventions that relate to:

    • Environmental factors –link to module Public Health engineering

    • The population and health services –vaccination, drug prophylaxis, rapid diagnosis and early treatment, ... (these are further developed during other course modules)

• Example(s) of feasibility and limitations to implement control measures