Nursing: Community Nursing Profile

Community nurses have a high significance in providing primary health services to the people of the relevant community. They are responsible for educating their people about the health problem, detecting health problems through screening, and offering treatment to reduce patient mortality rates. This paper aims to gather information about a selected community to offer nursing interventions to treat health problems identified in the locality. The completion of the community profile of Inner West, Australia, would be presented using the community profile data package based on 2016 census data.

Description of Public Health Problem

Hepatitis B is the illness of the liver caused by Hepatitis germs. The aetiology of the disease indicates that it is primarily caused by having unprotected sex who is already infected with the ailment, sharing of the injection or other related needles with the person who has the disease, being transferred from mother to child who is pregnant,and a point of concern for the healthcare workers too who are in constant contact with the needlework and might get infected if they come in contact with the infected needle (Mayo Clinic, 2020). The infection could be considered chronic when it lasts more than six months, creating high chances of liver failure, cancer in the liver, and a condition that imprint permanent scars on the liver called cirrhosis.

The epidemiology of the disease tells us that it is more common in the Asia Pacific and sub-Saharan African regions of the world (MacLachlan & Cowie, 2015). In the countries where its chronic type is more prevalent, it is majorly have been developed at birth or in early childhood, comprising 8% of those populations. The global rate of its prevalence is estimated to be 45%, which is considered high. The vertical transmission, passage on of the illness from mother to child, is more predominant in Asia as compared to Africa, where women who are at the ripe child-bearing age are infected at a higher rate, and the HBV genotypes get the strong influence of the likelihood of their transmission to the baby. The worlds regions where its occurrence is considered intermediary include North Africa and the Middle East and some parts of Latin America, Eastern and Southern Europe, and South Asia with the rate of 2% to 7% (MacLachlan & Cowie, 2015). Also, the populations whose pervasiveness is quite low, less than 12%, are enlisted as Australia, Asia, Northern, and Western Europe, North America, some regions of South America, and Japan (MacLachlan & Cowie, 2015).

Research has suggested that globally, 1.2 million people are infected from this illness by injecting needles and that high risk of being infected from Hepatitis B in adulthood when it gets transmitted by being in contact with the infected person, men having sex with men, unprotected sex with the infected person and among homeless people (MacLachlan & Cowie, 2015). The migration of several people carrying the disease germs causes a high probability of spreading this disease.

World Health Organization (2021) found out that 296 million people with chronic Hepatitis B were infected in 2019 at the rate of being infected 1.5 million each coming year. The number of fatalities resulting from this disease has been up to 820,000 in the same year, mostly due to cirrhosis and primary liver cancer called hepatocellular carcinoma. Safe and effective vaccines are the number one treatment available for the prevention of this disease.

In Australia, the people living with Chronic Hepatitis B (CHB) in 2018 were 0.90% of the total population, accounting for up to 226,566 individuals (Hepatitis Australia, 2020). 68.1% of the people altogether have been screened for the illness, whereas the national target is set to be 80% by the year 2022. People getting treated for this disease are only 22.1%, whereas the national target is 50% by 2022. Very few are treated with antiviral therapy for CHB infection, 9.3% of the people, which is even lower than half of expected by 2022. The mortality rate of this disease was 435 deaths in the year 2018, whereas the target was set to be less than 328 deaths in 2022.

Based on the data generated by ASHM (2014-15-a), the prevalence of this disease was estimated in 2015 to be 1.0% of the total population, 239,167 individuals in total. The number of new cases in Australia occurred at the rate of 26.8% per 100,000. The treatment for this disease was offered to 6.1% of the total infected person in the same year, projected as half of the total estimated treatment cases in the entire region. It was also estimated that the number of people treated in 2015 was slightly higher than those in the previous year. Further, ASHM (2018-b) notified that only 63% of the Australian people are assessed to have been detected with Hepatitis B. CHB infection is estimated to be in two-thirds of the overseas-born people living in the country. Most cases are evident among men having sex with men and the migrated people that cannot be prevented from vaccination. One-quarter of the deaths from Hepatitis B is due to liver failure, cancer in the liver, and cirrhosis.

In the most recent data generated from NSW Government Australia, the number of tests conducted on people to test this disease reduced by 1.7% in 2019 compared to 2018 (NSW Government, 2019). The number of patients released from the treatment center increased by 2% in the same year, which means that the NSW government is making considerable achievement in the reduction of Hepatitis B infection for improving Australian peoples health outcomes. The percentage of infants vaccinated against this disease increased in the year 2019 in comparison with 2018. However, pregnant women screened for any signs of the disease at giving birth increased by 0.4%. The five districts that have the highest relevance of Hepatitis B from January 2017 to December 2019 include Western Sydney, Northern Sydney, South Eastern Sydney, South Western Sydney, and Sydney (NSW Government, 2019). The best prevention and control strategies carried out in Australiaare vaccination...…there would be a high risk of vertical transmission of this virus while giving birth and living in Australia, and in future, transmitting this disease from the child to other persons of the Australian community. Nurses and doctors are placed in the designated departments of immigration to detect these signals when the migrants are entering Australia, where nurses would be closer to the pregnant women population. They would conduct antenatal screenings, including ultrasound and some blood tests of the expecting women, so that the spread of chronic Hepatitis B could be prevented in Australia (He et al., 2020), particularly in Inner West.

For avoiding the spread of Hepatitis B in the newborn population in the Inner West, nurses need to disseminate knowledge about the disease to the pregnant women, their diagnosis, and prevention tips to these women (Mursy & Mohamed, 2019). Along with this, prompt administration of immunoglobulin is also included in the nurses job, which is only possible if they have equipped with every miniature detail of the disease themselves.

The nurses have to be careful in assessing the disease among pregnant women to prevent vertical transmission and the grave health conditions of the mother herself (Maraolo et al., 2018). The therapeutic intervention for Hepatitis B detection and the prescribing of vaccines during the appropriate pregnancy duration are major steps nurses have to take to make the expecting mothers free of this virus.

In this process, the major barrier in providing serious care to pregnant women about Hepatitis B is the lack of appropriate education, their beliefs and attitudes, and the nurses self-efficacy on the insufficient awareness about the interventions (Chao et al., 2019). Provision of counseling to pregnant women is only possible when nurses are educated about the culturally appropriate strategies for handling such patients. It stands true for the migrant population in Australia as well since people from diverse cultures have their attitudes and beliefs about a disease, such as the illness is a punishment from God and consider it a social stigma, for which the nurses have to be careful in suggesting therapeutic interventions for Hepatitis B prevention (Robotin et al., 2021).

Conclusion

The limited understanding of culturally diverse populations causes a high risk of disease prevalence in these sections and makes Hepatitis B viral and chronic. Australia has diverse ethnicities and several migrants who have settled in the country for years now, putting the Inner West community at risk of getting infected with the Hepatitis B virus. Although the community profile of this LGA shows strong health signs, there still are factors, such as the high number of migrants and newborn babies in the community who need nursing care in this matter. The availability of vaccine and treatment options is unknown to many migrants, especially if pregnant women are also in this population. Hence, nurses of the Inner West community should give a prudent look into this specific segment so that awareness about food intake, cooking tactics, healthy fruits and vegetables, and training to eliminate fear should be carried…