NURSING
Nursing: Vaccine-Preventable Diseases
One of the 17 vaccine-preventable diseases is Hepatitis B. Research from Healthy People (2022) has suggested that although this disease could be prevented with vaccines, countries with the resources do not implement them thoughtfully. Certain factors determine its spread as the carriers have specific social, economic, and health characteristics that need further exploration to stop the outbreaks. It is a type of infection that takes four to eight weeks to infect a body, and sometimes, the infected person does not have its symptoms and is oblivious that he is the carrier. For this reason, people mainly get treatments once they get sick from an illness like this rather than obtaining health promotion or prevention tips. Lifestyle changes and updates about the evidence-based practices could help get rid of Hepatitis B even before it is detected. Hepatitis B vaccine is effective and safe and is even recommended by countries from birth ill the age of 18 years. People above that age could also get injected after consulting their physician if they suffer from other chronic conditions.
Hepatitis B is one of the leading causes of liver cancer, and despite the presence of its vaccine for more than two to three decades, there still are examples of outbreaks of the infection. Modasa town in Gujrat is one of the primary examples of an outbreak of this disease that occurred in 2009. The major cause for the spread of this infection was reported to be unsafe injection practices that magnified the problem to 664 cases (Rastogi et al., 2021). There were no sterilized needles and syringes that led to the greater spread of the disease in the said town and the neighboring areas (Suresh, 2020). More reasons were later found to be lack of awareness about its prevention and absent skills for the management of patients by the healthcare workers (HCWs).
References
Healthy People. (2022, February 6). Immunization and infectious diseases. https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/immunization-and-infectious-diseases
Rastogi, A., Chauhan, S., Ramalingam, A., Verma, M., Babu, S., Ahwal, S. & Bansal, A. (2021). Capacity building of healthcare workers: Key step towards elimination of viral hepatitis in developing countries. Plos One, 16(6). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253539
Suresh, K. (2020). SARS CoV-2 pandemic mars the world hepatitis day theme 2020 of Hepatitis free future in India while hepatitis C research wins Nobel Prize-2020. Open Journal of Hepatology, 2(1), 9-14. http://dx.doi.org/10.17352/ojh.000005
