Health is critical for any person since, at one point, a person must fall ill and may need some form of health checkup. Prevention of disease is thus at the heart of the public health. It is due to such a rationale that the epidemiologists have a critical role in ensuring that they come up with a critical application that can help people become aware of their environment, and ways they can understand the outbreak of disease and report them to the right institutions. The need to recruit the next generation of public health professionals has never been greater. This interactive game provides a fun and challenging way to introduce students to the field of public health. The play coaxes investigative skills intending to apply knowledge to identify a public health problem, and also follow it to get the right ways of solving the problem. The idea, in this case, is to get a solution as first as possible before more people get sick. During my time while interacting with this game, I got unique results which I have described in this article.
Finding the disease and the infected organization
Diarrhea is the disease which I have identified during my internship at Outbreak at Watersedge. The infected organism, in this case, is the human being who was taking a tour or who were present at the site of at Thompson park which is where I realized that most of the cases which the health departments stemmed in there report. The process of pinpointing diarrhea as the central disease that was affecting those who reported at the park was complicated and full of challenges, yet amazing. The first step was to talk to the receptionist, who directed me to the epidemiologists who was in charge of many issues concerning the health matters. I filled a registration form in this case which was mainly writing my name and spending sometimes with the receptionist as she briefs me on some of the critical facts about the how I could carry out my internship and achieve my goal. At the epidemiologist, there was a lot of clinical interviews ongoing with many patients complaining of mostly diarrhea cases. At that time, there were four cases already on the panel and were under investigations. Watersedge is a wide place with many areas with a lot of people. It houses different recreation centers and many things which create some forms of instability within the area with regards to health matters. Under the guidance of Terry and Shoua, we embarked on some of the cases which were available during that time.
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Mapping and finding the root causes of the disease
The method which we used to get to the root cause of the illness was mapping. By definitions, Disease maps are visual representations of complex geographic data that provide a quick overview of said information. Disease mapping is applicable in many areas. However, people mainly use it for explanatory purposes . Disease maps can be presented to survey high-risk areas and to help policy and resource allocation in said areas. During my internship in this area, disease mapping was the primary tool I used to identify the geographical location where the disease was prone ( Enticott et al., 2018). There were four cases of disease and their symptoms. From each case, we mapped different areas where the patients visited during that time. Specifically, these were the three areas the patients toured two days before they became ill that day. From each of the patient available, we mapped together with Terry these areas intending to finding the most common areas where the patients who are complaining of diarrhea visited two days before they became ill. After mapping, Thompson Park was the target place as most of the affected people interacted with the location. This place was marked because two days before most of the patients became seek, they visited this place. I was sent by Terry and Shoua to research this place to find out why people were becoming sick.
When I arrived at the park, which was the area I mapped, I had my notebook. I identified many things that could have a link to the condition in that place. I identified different litter bins, the water or the ocean, the grills, the drainage and people whom I had to share with to find out their perceptions concerning various activities that have been ongoing in this area. I had to go back and share my result with the departments to help me analyze and understand the effect. From our analysis, we suspected some things, such as drills and drainage, and we examined them. I had to go back to the park and collect more samples. The mapped places also had a laboratory, and I was glad because I wanted some samples tested to reassure me that what was affecting the population in that place was diarrhea as a result of poor sanitation, drainage, and the heavy rainfall. Rainfall was the chief suspect since it brought a lot of contaminated water to the water lakes which were used for cooking food and also doing cleanliness within the area. Luckily, the result showed that the water was contaminated and thus, I arrived at a conclusion that drainage was the sole reason why people within this area were suffering from diarrhea.
Reference
Enticott, G., Mitchell, A., Wint, W., & Tait, N. (2018).Mapping Disease Data: a Usability Test of an Internet-based system of Disease status Disclosure. Frontiers in Veterinary Science , 4 , 230.
