A health crisis or public health crisis is a difficult situation or complex

health system Health, according to the World Health Organization, is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity".World Health Organization. (2006)''Constitution of the World Health Organi ...

that affects humans in one or more geographic areas (mainly occurred in natural hazards), from a particular locality to encompass the entire planet. Health crises generally have significant impacts on community health, loss of life, and on the economy. They may result from disease, industrial processes or poor policy. Its severity is often measured by the number of people affected by its geographical extent, or the

disease A disease is a particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure or function of all or part of an organism, and that is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical conditions that a ...

or death of the pathogenic process which it originates.

Features

Generally there are three key components in health crises: * Public health problem * Problem health coordination * Alarm care: Poor communication of risks to the population resulting in social upheaval.

Types

* Environmental * Food * Toxic

Examples

* 1858:

Swill milk scandal The swill milk scandal was a major adulterated food scandal in New York in the 1850s. ''The New York Times'' reported an estimate that in one year 8,000 infants died from swill milk. Name ''Swill milk'' referred to milk from cows fed swill which ...

* 1905: American meat scandal due to the publishing of Upton Sinclair's book "The Jungle". * 1918-1920:

Spanish flu The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case wa ...

* 1963: Birth defects by

thalidomide Thalidomide, sold under the brand names Contergan and Thalomid among others, is a medication used to treat a number of cancers (including multiple myeloma), graft-versus-host disease, and a number of skin conditions including complications o ...

* 1981:

Toxic oil syndrome Toxic oil syndrome (TOS) or simply toxic syndrome (Spanish: ''síndrome del aceite tóxico'' or ''síndrome tóxico'') is a musculoskeletal disease. A 1981 outbreak in Spain which affected about 20,000 people, with over 300 dying within a few m ...

or simply toxic syndrome **

HIV/AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual ...

* 1996:

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease, is an incurable and invariably fatal neurodegenerative disease of cattle. Symptoms include abnormal behavior, trouble walking, and weight loss. Later in the course of t ...

(BSE), commonly known as mad-cow disease * 1998:

Doñana disaster The Doñana Disaster, also known as the Aznalcollar Disaster or Guadiamar Disaster ( Sp: ''Desastre de Aznalcóllar'', ''Desastre del Guadiamar''), was an industrial accident in Andalusia, southern Spain. On 25 April 1998, a holding dam burst ...

, also known as the Aznalcollar Disaster or Guadiamar Disaster * 2001:

Anthrax attacks The 2001 anthrax attacks, also known as Amerithrax (a portmanteau of "America" and "anthrax", from its FBI case name), occurred in the United States over the course of several weeks beginning on September 18, 2001, one week after the September 11 ...

in the United States, also known as Amerithrax * 2003:

Severe acute respiratory syndrome Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a viral respiratory disease of zoonotic origin caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-1), the first identified strain of the SARS coronavirus species, ''sev ...

(SARS) * 2004:

Avian influenza Avian influenza, known informally as avian flu or bird flu, is a variety of influenza caused by viruses adapted to birds.

(H5N1), sometimes avian flu, and commonly bird flu * 2006: Côte d'Ivoire toxic waste dump ** Trans fat toxicity * 2007: Lead paint on toys from China * 2008: The

2008 Chinese milk scandal The 2008 Chinese milk scandal was a significant food safety incident in China. The scandal involved Sanlu Group's milk and infant formula along with other food materials and components being adulterated with the chemical melamine, which res ...

was a food safety incident in China, involving milk and infant formula, and other food materials and components, adulterated with melamine. ** Canada listeriosis outbreak and

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the eas ...

Ministerio de Salud de Chile. Listeriosis: con medidas simples la población puede prevenirla. 28/11/2008. Access date 26/05/2013.
Ministerio de Salud de Chile. Informe Listeriosis. 25/08/2009. Access date 26/05/2013.
/ref> * 2009: Pandemic H1N1/09 Influenza * 2010:

Haiti earthquake Some of the earthquakes in Haiti have been very destructive to the country. The widespread damage and high-number of casualties of events in 2010 and 2021 can be partially blamed on the fact that most of the population in Haiti resides in struct ...

* 2011: Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami ** E. coli O104:H4 outbreak * 2012: Fraud on breast implants ''Poly Implant Prothèses'' (PIP) * 2013-16:

Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa The 2013–2016 epidemic of Ebola virus disease, centered in Western Africa, was the most widespread outbreak of the disease in history. It caused major loss of life and socioeconomic disruption in the region, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and S ...

* 2015: Zika virus outbreak * 2019-ongoing:

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

* 2022:

2022 monkeypox outbreak An ongoing outbreak of monkeypox, a viral disease, was confirmed in May 2022. The initial cluster of cases was found in the United Kingdom, where the first case was detected in London on 6 May 2022 in a patient with a recent travel his ...

Prevention and control

* Using the health warning systems. A health system responsive to the needs of the population is required to refine the instruments to ensure adequate preparation before their hatching. * Transparency of the institutions public or private. The perception of crisis can escape the control of experts or health institutions, and be determined by stakeholders to provide solutions propagate or concerned. This requires a difficult balancing of the need to articulate clear answers and the little-founded fears. * Adequate information policy. Irrationality arise when information is distorted, or hidden. Face a health crisis involves: respect for society, coordination of organizations and an institution with scientific weight to the people and to the media, who acted as spokesman in situations of public health risk, to get confidence citizens. The technical capacity of health professionals is more proven than the public officials, which suggests a greater share of the former and better training of the second. * Evaluate the previous crisis or others experiences. Crises are challenges that must be learned from both the mistakes and successes, since they serve to bring about to the devices and improve the response to other crises. It is important to perform analysis of previous responses, audit risk and vulnerability, research and testing, and drills to prepare themselves against future crises. * Having objectives: "first, to reduce the impact of illness and death, and second, to avoid social fracture". * Preparing contingency plans. Preparation is key to the crisis because it allows a strong response, organized, and scientifically based. Action plans must meet the professional early enough and properly trained, and politicians must be consistent in their actions and coordinate all available resources. It is essential to invest in public health resources to prepare preventive measures and reducing health inequalities to minimize the impact of health crises, as they generally always the poorest suffer most. * It is important to include all health professions especially primary health care (family physicians, pharmacists, etc.), as often it is these practitioners that are on the front-line in health crises.Watson KE, Singleton JA, Tippett V, Nissen LM. Defining pharmacists' roles in disasters: A Delphi study. PLoS One 2019;14(12):e0227132.

References

Bibliography

Bashir SA. Home Is Where the Harm Is: Inadequate Housing as a Public Health Crisis. American Journal of Public Health. 2002; 92(5):733-8.

Gross J. The Next Public Health Crisis: Longevity. The New York Times. 2010/10/21.

Navarro V. Spain is experiencing a Period of intense Social Crisis. Social Europe Journal. 12/11/2012.

External links

{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111015055828/http://www.orau.gov/cdcynergy/erc/default.htm , date=2011-10-15
International Journal of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (IJISCRAM)WHO: Humanitarian Health ActionUS Health Crisis
Crisis Health disasters Health policy Public health