Globalization Case Study

Globalization Case Study The country I have selected to complete this assignment is the Sudan, which is part of Central Africa. Earlier this month there was a reported epidemic of cholera in Juba, which is part of the Republic of South Sudan (WHO, 2014). Cholera is a contagious disease which is extremely fatal and is caused by "ingestion of food or water contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae" (Thalo, 2014). Specifically, there was one confirmed death attributed to this disease as of May 18th, and over 30 suspected cases altogether.

Were I the lead nurse in a shelter working in this country in a situation in which people were rapidly filing in to seek assistance, the first thing I would do is gather my team of nurses and brief them on the nature of this disease and how it is contracted.

I would inform them of the dire nature of the situation (since the disease is deadly) and explain that it thrives in conditions in which there is overcrowding, poor sanitation, and a lack of basic necessities including toilets with running water and clean water. I would prepare for this meeting by contacting local officials at the country's Ministry of Health and ask them for translators who could speak English, the country's native language, and any other languages that the nursing population might speak.

I would also stress that it is our jobs as nurses to get the population properly vaccinated and educated about steps to take to prevent further transmission of this disease. The three nursing interventions that I would need to do for my patients directly correlates to clean water, proper sanitation, and correct hygiene. Specifically, as nurses it would be our jobs to provide access to these valuable means of counteracting this epidemic.

These interventions, of course, would require a considerable amount of resources (both monetary and otherwise) that could possibly be facilitated by the Ministry of Health and its considerable bevy of partnerships with other health-related agencies. Ideally, we would be able to position these resources at the shelter to administer them to the patients as needed. There were a couple of different assessments that my nurses performed on our patients in order to confirm this cholera epidemic.

Firstly, there were "tests conducted by the AMREF laboratory in Nairobi" (Thabo, 2014), that helped to confirm cholera. The nurses and I were able to allude to this result as well as corroborate it by taking stool cultures and isolating the "Vibrio cholerae serogroup O1 or O139" (CDC, 2013), which is a similar means as that employed by the AMREF.

These assessments helped to prioritize care for patients by confirming the fact that cholera was responsible for this outbreak, and that there were basic issues related to sanitation, hygiene, and access to clean water that needed to be addressed in order to help the patient. These three interventions became the priority.

The most salient point of concern regarding this outbreak today is the fact that there may not simply be enough resources -- again, both monetary and otherwise) to provide sanitary and hygienic conditions for all those who have the potential to be affected by this outbreak. Clean water and modern latrines in general seem difficult to provide to everyone because of limitations regarding resources.

It is invaluable to send those patients who are from the areas in which the confirmed cases of cholera are from for treatment first, because they have a greater propensity for having contracted this disease. The health/environmental problem I would attempt to handle early in my work is the process of administering vaccinations, which is perhaps the swiftest way to reduce the incidence of additional cholera cases.

It might be difficult to attain the resources to significantly change the sanitary and hygienic conditions responsible for this epidemic in a short amount of time, but it certainly is possible to vaccinate people in this time frame. Despite the limited resources, one of the most powerful things the nurses and I can do to engender infection control is to educate our patients about the necessity of hygiene, sanitation, and accessing clean water and clean food.

These patients need to learn how to properly prepare food in the wake of a cholera outbreak in a matter that is sanitary and hygienic, such as eating raw foods after they have been washed in clean water, covering food, and washing their hands before eating (Thabo, 2014). In terms of standard precautions, it is necessary that the nurses working in the shelter and that the shelter itself has all of the resources to provide a sanitary, hygienic environment -- both for the workers and their patients.

While I work with the physicians with the sickest of the patients, one of the primary responsibilities that I could designate to others includes educating the masses about the particulars of this disease. Doing so not only includes telling them what cholera is, but also how it is contracted and, most importantly, all of the things they can do to prevent it from spreading. Nurses who are not working with the most sick patients should have this responsibility because it is still.