Question

You are an epidemiologist at a state health department, working in the disease surveillance unit. As part of your responsibilities, you routinely monitor your state’s data on reportable illnesses (http://wwwn.cdc.gov/NNDSS/script/SearchResults.aspx?Searchfor=). In your monthly update of case data, during which you generate trend charts and maps which cover each of the counties in your state, you notice what appears to be an increase in the number of babesiosis cases from the previous month. As a trained epidemiologist, you decide to look into the situation a bit further. Your system has information on the county of residence for the sick individual, as well as some basic demographic and clinical information (age, gender, race/ethnicity, health status, occupation).

Using the basic tenets of both descriptive epidemiology and surveillance, describe your approach to learning more about this potential babesiosis issue. Specifically, address the following questions in one or two detailed paragraphs.

1) Is this a babesiosis outbreak? Explain your answer.

2) What measures of disease frequency are relevant to your investigation?

3) What other pieces of information might be relevant, and how might you determine them?

Answer 1

1, Babesiosis is a malaria-like parasites also called a "piroplasm"that infects red blood.
​ Canine babesiosis is transmitted to dogs by infected ticks,with symptoms including a lack of appitite,fever and jaundice. It's normally only found in mainland Europe.The outbreak was widely reported in the national media.
​    The laboratory data also confirmed a small cluster of eight babesis causes in the chelmsford area of Essex,where the reported our break was centred.The clustering of these cases was consistent with exposure to a local infected tick population. "One striking finding from our analysis is that ticks remain active in winter. It's important to monitor tick activity and treatment across the Uk.
​2, A very common aim of epidemiological investigation is to estimate the frequency of diseases in a population. There are two main measures of disease is "Prevelence and Incidence"of disease. The survival time also included in the measures.
​ It's important to realise that this measures will therefore include both old and new cases of disease,which can be a problem when attempting to investigate risk factors for a diseases of long duration. In this study animal selected at random from the population will be diseased. The incidence risk is the proportion of nondiseased animal which develop disease over a particular period of time dividing number of animals which develop disease by the number of nondiseased animals. Those animals removed from population over this period without experiencing disease.
​3, Individuals who will be exposed to areas with high numbers of tick vectors for the babesia parasites(e.g- fields,wooded or marsh areas.etc..)
​ Such steps to be followed to prevent infection. Wearing long-sleeved shirts,long pants and hats, wearing light-coloured clothing to make ticks more visible, using appropriate tick repellents, and carefully checking clothing and skin(particularly the scalp and the back of the neck) after being such locations...
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