Health outcomes and infectious disease control

With the development of improved health systems, antibiotics and vaccines throughout the 20th century, the prospects of control of infectious diseases improved. During the same time-frame, an approach to disease control was developed which used the health outcomes resulting from various interventions to choose, guide and modify those interventions. Despite these major advances in the control of diseases, infectious diseases have (with occasional exceptions) not only continued to occur but in many instances the situation had deteriorated with the emergence and re-emergence in recent years of a range of infectious diseases. In this paper we consider why infectious disease control has not benefited from the move towards a health outcomes approach, why infectious disease control might benefit from such a move, and the differences between infectious and non-infectious diseases when considering health outcomes. We follow-up with some practical approaches to the use of health outcomes. We argue that appropriate use of health outcomes when planning and evaluating infectious disease control programs will improve human health.