Public Part Health Crisis

Outbreak at Watersedge: A Public Health Discovery Game

The start of the participation in the epidemiological process begins with the location of the Department of Health. The sole reason for this is to get the necessary personnel and resources which are very essential in doing an effective epidemiology process. The department is endowed with experienced medical officers like the chief epidemiologist who has a wide ranging experience in water borne diseases.
At the Department of health, together with the available health personnel I got various medical profiles of different patients handed over to me. The profile contained medical status of the patients over the last few days after they were put under observation on suspicion that they were suffering from water borne disease. Diarrhea was one of the severe symptoms. I also noted that many other patients were getting admitted to the hospital at an alarming rate. This could signify that the disease was spreading fast.
After taking such notes, I set out to interview some of the infected patients with the view to get an idea of how they could have contracted this infection. I focused on key issues such as the most recent places the patients visited and the activities they got involved in. this would inform the mapping of areas suspected to contain the bacteria spreading the disease. Only places which were mentioned repeatedly by the patients would be mapped and studied by taking samples and carrying out a diagnosis.
The patients mentioned a number of places which included the zoo, malls, recreation centers but one location that was repeatedly mentioned was the Thomson Park. The park was mentioned by the highest number of patients being 5. This formed the basis for the first spot to explore in order to collect sample for testing.
I set out to the park to find out what important information and samples I could gather for diagnosis. At the Park I met Mai, who was also at the place to do sampling and testing of the lake water. The exercise was narrowed down to investigating zoonotic diseases which can be transmitted from animals to human and vice versa (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, 2014). Among the thing examined at the place was the fountain, trash can, coffee cup which was already used and dropped out of the dustbin, picnic tables where visitors sat and could have had contact with the bacteria from. I went further to examine the grill which looked clean. I noted down every detail observed from these points to help me spot any irregular features or observations.
The fountain is one of the drinking points hence it could be holding the bacteria. I took its samples for the laboratory test. The trash can and the coffee cup looked dirty and is a suspect to be the breeding place of these bacteria. These kind of samples could not be enough to diagnose the disease and I had to interview more patients to know what activities they involved themselves in whole at the park. Despite the patients mentioning many activities at the Park, the concession stand stood out of all of them. Arguably, all patients had some of their activities done at the concession stand. The concession stand stood the best chance to have been the point of contact with the bacteria. I therefore started my search at the stand, talking to anyone who could give any useful information about the place and collecting samples. I also decided to sample all the water sources in the park just in case any useful diagnosis could not be done at the stand, I could resort to the water samples.
The water sample I took came from the lake, fountain and the drain. I thereafter headed for the Department of health to study these samples in the laboratory. One of the factors that motivated my study of the water samples is having met the headline of one of the dailies indicating that heavy down pour could be a cause of the worrying infection among the patients. I submitted the samples to the laboratory for testing.
Among the samples, there was a positive outcome for the parasite cryptosporidium present in the water sample taken from the fountain near the beach. The cryptosporidium is a parasite that is mostly spread through water and infects the intestines, causing extreme diarrhea (CDC, 2017), hence water as a sources of this health crisis being more likely. The other samples were however negative. But what concerned me is that even those who did not drink or use water from the fountain got sick. It simply meant there was another source of the infection somewhere else.
The information given to me at the concession stand is that during the last event at the park, there was no water at the concession. The employees were thus forced to make fruit punch with water from the fountain by the beach. The fountain was undoubtedly the source of the illness. On study on the fountain, I realized that the fountain filter had malfunctioned and tested positive for cryptosporidium.
It is strange that the cryptosporidium was found only at the fountain. I set out to seek some reasons for this happening. In consultation with one Mr. Ted Hawthorne who happen to be the public health information officer at the Department of Health where I conducted the investigation. According to him, the entire park got its water supply from the city water but an exception existed; only the water from the contaminated fountain got its water from the old well. It also happened that the old pipes were never switched out on that fountain when an update was done. This formed the basis why the parasite could only be isolated from one spot, the fountain.
I finished this study by concluding that the prime causes of the illness to the patients were parasites in the well which contained cryptosporidium, the filters of the fountain also malfunctioned allowing the parasites reach the final consumer of the water and the situation was worsened by the running water caused by the heavy rains. This caused run off that carried water runoff from the cattle farm nearby the park to the well.
People who drank the fruit punch got sick because the water was turned off at the concession stand that day and the employees made the punch using the contaminated water from the fountain.
References
CDC, (2017). Parasites- Cryptosporidium (also known as ‘crypto’). Retrieved September 29, 2017 from https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/crypto/index.html
European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. (2014). Annual epidemiological report: Emerging and vector-borne diseases. Retrieved September 29, 2017 from https://ecdc.europa.eu/sites/portal/files/media/en/publications/Publications/emerging-vector-borne-diseases_annual-epidemiological-report-2014.pdf