Epidemiology and communicable disease - Assignment Example

Epidemiology and communicable disease affiliation Environmental conditions in which an individual is born, live or work in, and has an effect on his/her health, quality of life and pose a health risk to that individual are the social determinants of health. An example of the social determinants of health includes economy, workplace, schools and church among others. In addition, the resources that enhance the quality of life have a great significance in influencing the health outcomes of a person.

They include the availability of health services, access to education and affordable housing among others. The social determinant of health has a great influence to the development of illness among the population. For example, individuals who have higher income are likely to access better health services while those with low income are likely not to access health services. This puts those poor person to develop diseases and do not go for treatment, thus making some communicable diseases to spread in the society (Marmot et al., 2012). Communicable disease chain is a circuit of events that starts from a disease-causing urgent to reach an individual ultimately and causes infection.

The chain entails the following components: infectious agent, a reservoir, portal of exit, mode of transmission, portal of entry and susceptible host. For an individual to become infected the entire chain must be intact. However, breaking just one component of the chain of infection makes the infectious disease difficult to spread (Aginam, 2002). There are steps that a nurse can take to break the chain of infection and stop the disease from spreading. For example ensuring that, all children are fully immunized against some diseases like measles and flu among others since this will break the chain from the source.

Proper hand washing before handling food, this breaks the chain on mode of transmission and prevents the spread (Brachman, 2001).ReferenceAginam, O. (2002). International law and communicable diseases. Bulletin of the World Health Organization.Brachman, P. S. (2001). Control of Communicable Diseases Manual, 17th Edition. American Journal of Epidemiology, 154, 783–a–784. Marmot, M., Allen, J., Bell, R., Bloomer, E., & Goldblatt, P. (2012). WHO European review of social determinants of health and the health divide.

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