Surveillance and management of influenza on the African continent.
Surveillance and management of influenza on the African continent.
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DOI：
10.1586/ers.10.10
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发表时间：
2010-04-01
影响因子：
3.9
通讯作者：
Schoub, Barry D
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Schoub, Barry D
评估：Yazdanbakhsh M、Kremsner PG。非洲流感。公共科学图书馆医学。 6(12), e1000182 (2009)。除了其他严重的健康问题外，非洲大陆还承受着非常沉重的传染病负担。毫不奇怪，流感在非洲大陆受到的关注相对较少，尽管它本身就是发病和死亡的一个主要原因——由于基础疾病的流行加剧，其程度比发达国家高得多。实验室支持的缺乏可能是患者临床管理的一个严重缺陷。例如，发热性疾病常常被错误地视为疟疾。此外，实验室能力的不足是全球流感总体监测以及新发感染总体监测的严重缺陷。流感是所有人类病毒中研究最严格的病毒之一，在四分之三个世纪前就被分离出来，并从那时起就得到了深入的研究。人们对其分子生物学了解甚多，但其流行病学行为及其不可预测性至今仍然是公共卫生问题。此外，虽然大多数有关流感的文献都是从世界发达国家发表的，而冬季在其流行病学中发挥着关键作用，但相比之下，人们对热带国家的流感行为知之甚少，对非洲大陆的流感行为知之甚少。 2009 年北美爆发的新型甲型流感 (H1N1) 疫情完全出人意料，这充分说明了在世界各地建立综合监测设施的重要性。
EVALUATION OF: Yazdanbakhsh M, Kremsner PG. Influenza in Africa. PLoS Med. 6(12), e1000182 (2009). The African continent is burdened with a very heavy load of communicable diseases over and above other severe health problems. Not surprisingly, influenza has received relatively little attention on the continent even though it is, in its own right, a major cause of morbidity and mortality--to a much greater extent than in the developed world owing to the aggravating prevalence of underlying diseases. The paucity of laboratory support can be a serious drawback in the clinical management of patients. For example, cases of febrile illnesses are frequently erroneously treated as malaria. In addition, this deficiency of laboratory capacity is a serious gap in the overall global surveillance of influenza and, indeed, of new emerging infections in general. Influenza has been one of the most rigorously studied of all human viruses, having been isolated three-quarters of a century ago and intensively investigated since then. Much is known about its molecular biology, but its epidemiological behavior and its unpredictability still remain public-health problems to this day. Furthermore, while most literature on influenza has been published from developed countries of the world, where the winter season plays a pivotal role in its epidemiology, by contrast, relatively little is known about influenza behavior in tropical countries and even less in the African continent. How important it is to have a comprehensive surveillance facility in all parts of the world has been graphically illustrated by the totally unexpected and unpredicted start of the 2009 novel influenza A (H1N1) pandemic in North America.