Neighborhood health volunteers were educated on re-emerging infectious diseases in hopes of quickly identifying and controlling tuberculosis, diphtheria and other illnesses that long have been dormant in Pattaya.
Mayor Anan Charoenchasri chaired a May 9 meeting of the Surveillance Rapid Response Team, aiming to give the 100 volunteers assembled knowledge leading to constant disease observation in the city’s 42 communities.
Public Health Department nurse Naanya Jantarakard spoke about both emerging infectious diseases – those with steady increases in cases over the past 20 years such as AIDS – and those that are re-emerging.
She said while Pattaya is vigilant in health promotion, disease prevention and control, medical treatment and rehabilitation, a shortage of personnel requires average residents to take a prominent role in the initial identification, prevention and control of diseases.
The key, Naanya said, is fast identification, fast reporting and fast control.
The SRRT force plays a key role and is directed to quickly report diseases or abnormal situations, investigate diseases and health hazards, initiate initial disease control, immediately warn about diseases or health hazards, analyze and prioritize diseases and health hazards, and collect information on how various diseases break out in communities.
Training on those procedures is held monthly.
Naanya said some infectious diseases have reappeared due to climate change and altered interaction between humans and animals. Thus the diseases spring up from places different from where they were first detected.
