Countries attitude in preventing and treating the current pandemic

(included but not limited to zika virus) to protect the civilians.

Vania Laurencia/ Diponegoro University

The role of the health and the countrys attitude in preventing the spread of
the disease by immigrants.
Introduction

In January 2016 WHO(World Health Organization) named the zika virus a public
health emergency of international concern. Zika virus has rapidly been growing
and infecting more than 4 million people in just one year. To begin with, the
disease that spreads rapidly and affects a lot of people in the same time called
epidemic. While pandemic is epidemic that has spread over several countries or
continents.
Zika has already been linked to birth defect in more than 20 countries since the
outbreak began in 2015. The disease spreads through mosquito and when pregnant
women are infected that can result in small babies head and brain damages.
Eventhough it is originally spread by mosquitos, immigrants also play a big role
in
spreading the virus.
1. Public health emergency of international concern is defined as an
extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other
states through the international spread of disease and to potentially require a
coordinated international response.
2. The WHO has declared a public health emergency three times since the
International Health Regulation were enacted in 2007.
The first was in 2009, with the outbreak of the H1N1 swine flu pandemic.
The second was in May 2014, when polio seemed to surge again
The third time, in August 2014. Came as the ebola outbreak in West
Africa was growing out of control.
While we were dealing with ebola outbreak in 2014, countries attitude at that
time was to close borders to keep people inside the country and to minimalize
immigrants that came. That proves how immigrants play an important role in
spreading diseases. Moreover, in our increasingly global world, a single infected
person can board a plane and spread a virus accross continents. So how actually
immigrants spread the disease and is the effort done by countries enough to
minimalize the spreading of disease?
There are 4 types of what we call as immigrants, they are as followings.
1. Immigrants are people who are not citizen, but live inside the country
under a legally recognized and lawfully recorded permanent residence as an
immigrant
2. Refugee are persons who are unable or unwilling to return to their country
of nationality because of persecution due to race, religion, nationality, and
membership in particular group.
3. Asylees are foreign persons who are unable or unwilling to return to their
countries of nationality or who seek protection from the country they run in
because of persecution or a well founded fear of persecution.
4. Parolees are foreign persons who are allowed into certain country for
urgent humanitarian reasons or when that persons entry is determined to be
significant public benefits.

Problems
1. Hows the current condition?
2. Why immigrants have something to do with the spreading of pandemic&
do all types of immigrants affect the spreading?
3. Hows the importance of health to the countries and is that the interest of
country?
4. How was the past attitude of country toward this pandemic problem? Was
that enough to stop or minimalize pandemic at the moment?
5. How important is the role of country and health organization toward
pandemic problems?
6. How is the current attitude of countries compared to the past attitude?
What makes them different? Which one is the best to solve the problem?(what the
ebola crisis can teach us about responding to the zika outbreak?)
7. What should the countries do to overcome the problem and prevent future
pandemic?
Discussion
1. The current condition
Zika, linked to shrunken brains in children, has caused panic in Brazil. Thousands
of people have been infected and it has been spreading to approximately more
than 20 countries in the world. This is a very severe condition because in current
situation theres no cure for the virus. If the infection of the fetus does occur and
microcephaly develops, them we have no ability to alter the outcome of that very
bad disease which can sometimes lead to mentally incapacity for children.
The symptoms in adults and children are similar to dengue fever but some people
also experience no symptoms at all. In rare case the disease might also lead to
complications including Guillain-Barre syndrome, a disorder of the nervous
system which can cause paralysis.
What is actually zika virus:
1. Spread by aedes aegypti mosquito
2. First discovered in Africa in the 1940s but is now spreading in Latin
America
3. Can lead to fever and a rash but sometimes people show no symptoms
4. Theres no known cure
5. Only way to fight zika is to clear stagnant water and protect against
mosquito bites
As a conclusion, zika has spread on a massive scale in the America, Uganda,
Pakistan, Malaysia, French Polinesia, Indonesia, and Brazil.
2. The problem actually lies in the illegal immigrants and refugees because
those two groups of immigrants have more possibility in carrying the virus or
even attract a lot more mosquitos which can cause more zika virus to happen.
First thing first, all immigrants should undergo a medical test to make sure they
dont carry disease which can infect the other people inside the country but that
doesnt give 100% guarantee because as we know, sometimes, in rare case people
show no symptoms at all. In illegal immigrants, of course they will not undergo
certain process in order to detect any disease because they illegally come to
certain country and by illegally means no legal documents or visa to support them
entering the country. This is very harmful not only to the country but also to the
illegal immigrants themselves. To the country, the harm is in the protection and
health care toward the citizen, because once they enter the country, all disease
which they might carry also directly come with them to enter the country.
When this happens, even only with one sneeze these particular immigrants have
high possibility to infect another people inside the country with the disease.
Second of all, the refugee, the people who have no choice to run to the other
countries. These people are usually provided with shelter or housing or what we
call as refugee camp. In current situation, refugee camp is not being taken care
really well. There is rarely clean place and sanctination thus this refugee camp
becomes the root of diseases. Not to mention the fact that those people are
actually the people who have just traveled long way through land and sea without
even thinking about hygiene and cleanness which can be the breeding ground of
mosquitos. This is very problematic since the cause of the zika pandemic itself is
the mosquitos. Therefore, government needs to make sure every single person that
comes and goes or passes the border of countries at least has very minimum risk
of spreading the virus.
3. Interest of the country
Education and healthcare are the rights of every citizen that the country has to
provide. Therefore, it's within the interest of country to give the best protection
and healthcare facility. That's why in every country we have hospital, medical
care, Red Cross, and all medical workers. Moreover, it's also for the good image
of each nations to simply have good and fast response toward pandemic, because
in the case of pandemic, whatever news will be escalated quickly in the world
media. Not to mention, it's also not the interest of every country to get the
spreading of pandemic because then they will have to deal with the consequences
such as providing more budget to treat the victims of the virus, will have less
productive resources because of the virus. Thus, its really the interest of country
in terms of health care.
4. In 2014, we have ebola outbreak as the pandemic. The ebola virus has killed
over 11 000 people, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, since 2013.
Liberia and Guinea have recently been declared free although experts warn that
the virus can re-emerge quickly. The attitude toward this ebola virus was send
medical workers to certain countries that infected with the virus and also provide
funding and international support. However, WHO claims that in ebola outbreak,
there were delays and mismanagement in its response to the ebola crisis that
ravaged three West African countries in 2014. The international community at
that time was simply waiting without taking any decision until the crisis spinned
out of control. This has proven by the large number of dead people because of the
ebola crisis. At least the response was adequate to stop the outbreak, proven by
the end of outbreak even though the virus can be back anytime soon.

5. The role of country and health organization is very important in this case
because they are the decision makers and because the citizen trust them to do so.
The country itself has important role because it is the one who has the capacity
and obligation to control the immigration, whoever come and go inside the
country. Moreover country also the policy maker(in this case about the
pandemic)which at the end will be felt by every single layer of society in the
country.
Country also the one who gives access for health organization to do what they
have to do because whatever decision the health organization make,
they have to do so.
through the country first. For instance, sending medical treatment for the patients
inside the country, giving the supply of drugs&healthy food and etc.
For the health organization, it's obvious that their existence is to maintain good
quality of healthcare and focus on health issue. Thus, it becomes their main role
totake action in this pandemic case because it has something to do with the health
ofmillion people in the world. Health organizations role in this case is to
announce the emergency, so the country and the health organization itself can be
ready and
taking care of this pandemic quickly and seriously. Lastly and most importantly is
to minimalize the victims or even make sure there will be no victims.

6. The lessons that can be learned about responding to pandemic from ebola
outbreak is that we should not wait until a crisis spins out of control or we cannot
wait until there are large number of victims then finally we take control.
The differences between the response toward ebola outbreak amd zika virus are in
the time and resources. The current actions are vast mobilization and funding and
international support to drastically reduce the mosquito population in zika
affected areas, intense surveillance, determining conclusively the link between
zika and infant malformations and accelerated research for a vaccine.
Moreover, Brazil responded in a very timely manner to the growing epidemic of
microcephaly and the Pan American Health Organization has done an excellent
job at issuing a level 2 travel alerts was appropriate, balance and a proactive step.
As a conclusion, the differences are only about the speed of response and making
sure there are resources. Because in ebola crisis, after the sharp increase patient,
there was no further act, because there just weren't enough diagnostic laboratory
or healthcare workers.
7. What country can do to overcome the current problem and prevent future
pandemic is:
l Prevention
For prevention, there can be education for civilians to live a better life in terms of
hygiene, health issue, and awareness about symptoms of disease. Lastly country
can also strengthen the regulation about illegal immigrants and refugee to
minimalize disease brought by them or even provide a better shelther for the
refugee so at least, government starts to send message to people that this health
issue is really
important.
l Curation
In curation, government and health organization can control for few months after
people get rid of the virus, send supply of drugs for recovery, provide good and
nutritious food, and make sure there will be more medical workers ready to help
anytime they are needed.

Conclusion
As a closing remark, pandemic does indeed happen only for less than 5 cases,
however, we cannot take this for granted. Proven by how many victims were
affected and even died because of pandemic. Not to forget all the disadvantages
the
country gets in terms of budget and such. Therefore, what countries and health
organization can do best is start to care and take fast response if anything looks
like going wrong. Furthermore what we can do as good society of government
is to enrich our knowledge so we, at least do not need to be dependant to the
government for everything. Instead, we can lessen the burden of government and
health organization because we already understand what we have to do when
pandemic attacks. Finally, when it comes to big problem, there will be big efforts
needed to solve it. Thus, in this case, every stakeholders(government, health
organization, and civilians) need to walk side by side to stop the reoccurment of
pandemic.
Sources :

Huffington post
BBC News
New York Times
Vox.com
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6207a1.htm
Test tube news
Infectious Disease Movement in a Borderless World (David Quammen,2007)