Infectious Disease: Community Response to Emerging Infectious Diseases

Emerging infectious diseases are those that are newly discovered, recently have increased in prevalence, or are expected to increase in prevalence in the future. Family physicians play an important role in leading community response to emerging infectious diseases. As with other types of disasters, the general approach to outbreaks has four stages: preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation. Preparedness includes promotion of community health, maintenance of high vaccination rates, development of protocols for hospitals and family medicine practices, preparation of patients for international travel, and consideration of volunteering in case of disasters. Response includes treatment of infected patients, minimization of the risk of transmission to other individuals, education of the public, and disease reporting to local health departments. Recovery can be physical and emotional. Mitigation efforts attempt to minimize long-term effects of the outbreak and apply lessons learned to prevent or minimize the effects of similar events in the future.