Team:Tsinghua/Introduction-Background

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<h1>Background</h1>
<h1>Background</h1>
<h2>Access to Health Care &amp; Pathogen detection</h2>
<h2>Access to Health Care &amp; Pathogen detection</h2>
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<p>Access to health care affects individuals and society in various ways and limited access to health care impacts people’s ability to reach their full potential, negatively influencing the quality of life. The major barriers concerned with access to health care include lack of availabilities, high cost and lack of insurance coverage. These limits would lead to the delays in receiving appropriate care, unmet health needs, inabilities to get preventive services, and hospitalization that could have been prevented. The access to health care could be affected in four different aspects: services, cost, timeliness and effect, which is also the critical factors for effective pathogen detection service.  
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Nowadays, one of the issues concerned with health is the access to comprehensive health care services and facilities in several areas including the surveillance of food and water, environment quality control and clinical diagnosis. The access to health services and facilities refers to the timely use of appropriate health related services to achieve better health outcomes, which is important for improving the quality of a healthy life for everyone. The access to health care directly has impacts on the quality of life, the overall physical, social and mental health status, the detection and treatments of health conditions, the prevention of diseases and disabilities, reducing preventable deaths and increasing life expectancy.  
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Figure 1. Access to health care influence the health status of individuals and population<br/>
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(<i>Picture from Healthy People 2010 and 2020 identify access to care as a leading indicator of health</i>)
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Figure 2. Distribution of the relative number of works appeared in the literature on detection of pathogenic bacteria.
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Food industry is one of the main areas concerned with the presence of pathogenic bacteria, failing to detect which leads to serious consequences. In 2005, there was an outbreak of salmonella in Spain, caused by a batch of contaminated pre-cooked chicken. The failing to detect the accumulation of this pathogen finally resulted in 2500 cases of infection and at least one death of salmonellosis. In Germany, there was another outbreak of pathogenic Gram-negative bacteria, <i>Escherichia coli</i> 0104:H4 in 2011, causing enterohaemorrhagic infections. These outbreaks of gram-negative bacteria raised requirements for more sensitive, specific and cost-effective methods for pathogen detection in food quality control.  
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Figure 3. The infection and death caused by 2011 E. coli O104:H4 outbreak. <br/>
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(<i>Picture from Case definition for HUS-cases associated with the outbreak in Germany</i>)
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<p>Improving pathogen detection depends on ensuring that people have a usual and ongoing source of related care services, especially increasing the access to and use of evidence-based preventive services or facilities. Prevention of illness should be improved by detecting early warning signs or symptoms before they develop to serious disease because the detection of disease at early leads to effective and cost-effective treatment. Cost of health care directly affect the access to related services or facilities for the reason that people would be less likely to receive medical car and more likely to have poor health status if they could not afford the cost for health care. Lack of inexpensive pathogen detection services would make it difficult for people to get the health care and burden people with large medical bills. Timeliness is the ability of health care system to provide health care quickly, including the time for waiting for services or facilities and the time for detection or treatment. Prolonged time for detection of pathogen could decrease the satisfaction of patient, increase amount of patients who give up detection or treatment, and is closely related to the clinically significant delays in health care. The effect of health care is one of the most important concern about improving health care for the reason that results from the pathogen detection services could influence the treatment to the patients, the health quality of people and the reliability of health care system.
 
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<p>Access to health care system, especially the detection of pathogenic microorganism, is required to be improved for the problematic pathogen surveillance systems now. The existing methods for detecting pathogens in food and water control or clinical diagnosis include microorganism culturing for testing specific characteristic of morphology of colony and biochemical functions, mass spectrometry testing for specific proteins, polymerase chain reaction testing for specific DNA sequence. The traditional method for detecting pathogen is culturing which is sensitive and cost-effective but the period for testing takes days. The testing methods with molecular or biochemical strategies are efficient and fast but the facilities and service is not easily accessible and the cost is high.
 
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<p>Specific issues about improving pathogen detection that should be monitored include designing and constructing novel appropriate, safe, and effective pathogen detection methods, increasing the timeliness and convenience of using the new systems for detection of pathogen, improving the sensitivity and specificity of pathogen detection services, and decreasing the cost of pathogen detection.
 
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<h3>Reference</h3>
 
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      [1] Lazcka O, Campo F, Munoz F X. Pathogen detection: a perspective of traditional methods and biosensors[J]. Biosensors and Bioelectronics, 2007, 22(7): 1205-1217.
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The detection of pathogenic microorganisms is essential for clinical diagnosis as well. <i>Pseudomonas aeruginosa</i> and <i>Staphylococcus aureus</i> are two pathogenic Gram-negative bacteria causing various diseases including ventilator-associated pneumonia, cystic fibrosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Infection by these two pathogens leads to serious problems related to human health. Fast and sensitive detection of these pathogens is required for rapidly administered and appropriate antibiotic treatments in serious medical conditions.  
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      [2] Nassif X. A revolution in the identification of pathogens in clinical laboratories[J]. Clinical infectious diseases, 2009, 49(4): 552-553.
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The access to health care is one of the critical issues related to health all around the world while pathogen detection is a major part of it. To ensure higher life quality and health status, access to the detection of pathogenic microorganisms, especially pathogenic Gram-negative bacteria, is essential and required to be improved.  
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Revision as of 12:37, 27 September 2013

Background

Access to Health Care & Pathogen detection

Nowadays, one of the issues concerned with health is the access to comprehensive health care services and facilities in several areas including the surveillance of food and water, environment quality control and clinical diagnosis. The access to health services and facilities refers to the timely use of appropriate health related services to achieve better health outcomes, which is important for improving the quality of a healthy life for everyone. The access to health care directly has impacts on the quality of life, the overall physical, social and mental health status, the detection and treatments of health conditions, the prevention of diseases and disabilities, reducing preventable deaths and increasing life expectancy.

Figure 1. Access to health care influence the health status of individuals and population
(Picture from Healthy People 2010 and 2020 identify access to care as a leading indicator of health)

Figure 2. Distribution of the relative number of works appeared in the literature on detection of pathogenic bacteria.

Food industry is one of the main areas concerned with the presence of pathogenic bacteria, failing to detect which leads to serious consequences. In 2005, there was an outbreak of salmonella in Spain, caused by a batch of contaminated pre-cooked chicken. The failing to detect the accumulation of this pathogen finally resulted in 2500 cases of infection and at least one death of salmonellosis. In Germany, there was another outbreak of pathogenic Gram-negative bacteria, Escherichia coli 0104:H4 in 2011, causing enterohaemorrhagic infections. These outbreaks of gram-negative bacteria raised requirements for more sensitive, specific and cost-effective methods for pathogen detection in food quality control.

Figure 3. The infection and death caused by 2011 E. coli O104:H4 outbreak.
(Picture from Case definition for HUS-cases associated with the outbreak in Germany)

The detection of pathogenic microorganisms is essential for clinical diagnosis as well. Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus are two pathogenic Gram-negative bacteria causing various diseases including ventilator-associated pneumonia, cystic fibrosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Infection by these two pathogens leads to serious problems related to human health. Fast and sensitive detection of these pathogens is required for rapidly administered and appropriate antibiotic treatments in serious medical conditions.

The access to health care is one of the critical issues related to health all around the world while pathogen detection is a major part of it. To ensure higher life quality and health status, access to the detection of pathogenic microorganisms, especially pathogenic Gram-negative bacteria, is essential and required to be improved.

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