Hallo Leute,
I will also be making this post in English as it is over my Public Health Senior Capstone Project. Although I did my research with Rebecca and Mr. Haufiku, I based my Capstone on a different project. My project focuses on Hepatitis E Virus (HEV) in Namibia, and I developed a Public Health intervention in order to decrease the prevalence and burden of HEV in Namibia. Because HEV is commonly misdiagnosed as other diseases and is underresearched the true prevalence around the world and in Namibia is unknown. HEV is an important disease to bring attention to because it can become chronic, have lasting impacts on health, and can be fatal to those with weakened immune systems. It is even more so important to address HEV in Namibia and throughout Africa because there are large percentages of the population living with Malaria, TB, HIV/AIDS, or expecting mothers, all of which are at a higher risk of getting chronic HEV and have a higher rate of mortality from HEV. In order to address this disease, I based my project on a national surveillance program. The purpose of a surveillance program is to track, monitor, collect data, and analyze the spread of diseases within a country. The program I developed will track the number of cases, prevalence and mortality rates, and the demographics of those that contract the disease. Collecting this data would allow the Ministry of Health to directly addresses the burden of HEV in Namibia along with the prevalence, outbreaks, epidemics, and help at-risk populations. This program is special in that it has the ability to direct and suggest proper Public Health interventions to targeted populations and can be expanded to track more diseases such as the CDC does in the U.S.A. The above picture is the poster on my project that I will be presenting this April.
Tschüss für jetze,
Kimberly
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