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Exclusivity of Cultural Practices Within Emerging Disease Outbreak Responses in Developing Nations Leads to Detrimental Outcomes

A number of organizations provide aid and medical care to areas affected by emerging infectious disease outbreaks. This process oftentimes involves organizations traveling to developing areas and coordinating efforts on-site of the initial outbreak. Yet, the longevity and death toll of specific rece...

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Autor principal: Lal, Arnav
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8291361/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34295872
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.686540
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author Lal, Arnav
author_facet Lal, Arnav
author_sort Lal, Arnav
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description A number of organizations provide aid and medical care to areas affected by emerging infectious disease outbreaks. This process oftentimes involves organizations traveling to developing areas and coordinating efforts on-site of the initial outbreak. Yet, the longevity and death toll of specific recent outbreaks and inability to effectively control them lead to unnecessary deaths and an unconstructive use of resources. While virtually all organizations justifiably point toward limited resources as an explanatory mechanism, this in itself does not excuse poor utilization of resources. Specifically, organizations systematically do not factor cultural practices into their disease responses. This is demonstrated in analyzing components of responses during 3 recent outbreaks occurring at different times and on different continents: Ebola in 2014 and 2019, and Zika in 2016. While systemic trends in these differential environments demonstrate the extent of the problem, fortunately, scientific innovations, collaboration with local individuals and leadership, and especially establishment of cross-cultural dialogue and response flexibility with the eventual development of effective behavioral change communication can help curb or mitigate this issue in the future.
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spelling pubmed-82913612021-07-21 Exclusivity of Cultural Practices Within Emerging Disease Outbreak Responses in Developing Nations Leads to Detrimental Outcomes Lal, Arnav Front Public Health Public Health A number of organizations provide aid and medical care to areas affected by emerging infectious disease outbreaks. This process oftentimes involves organizations traveling to developing areas and coordinating efforts on-site of the initial outbreak. Yet, the longevity and death toll of specific recent outbreaks and inability to effectively control them lead to unnecessary deaths and an unconstructive use of resources. While virtually all organizations justifiably point toward limited resources as an explanatory mechanism, this in itself does not excuse poor utilization of resources. Specifically, organizations systematically do not factor cultural practices into their disease responses. This is demonstrated in analyzing components of responses during 3 recent outbreaks occurring at different times and on different continents: Ebola in 2014 and 2019, and Zika in 2016. While systemic trends in these differential environments demonstrate the extent of the problem, fortunately, scientific innovations, collaboration with local individuals and leadership, and especially establishment of cross-cultural dialogue and response flexibility with the eventual development of effective behavioral change communication can help curb or mitigate this issue in the future. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-07-06 /pmc/articles/PMC8291361/ /pubmed/34295872 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.686540 Text en Copyright © 2021 Lal. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Public Health
Lal, Arnav
Exclusivity of Cultural Practices Within Emerging Disease Outbreak Responses in Developing Nations Leads to Detrimental Outcomes
title Exclusivity of Cultural Practices Within Emerging Disease Outbreak Responses in Developing Nations Leads to Detrimental Outcomes
title_full Exclusivity of Cultural Practices Within Emerging Disease Outbreak Responses in Developing Nations Leads to Detrimental Outcomes
title_fullStr Exclusivity of Cultural Practices Within Emerging Disease Outbreak Responses in Developing Nations Leads to Detrimental Outcomes
title_full_unstemmed Exclusivity of Cultural Practices Within Emerging Disease Outbreak Responses in Developing Nations Leads to Detrimental Outcomes
title_short Exclusivity of Cultural Practices Within Emerging Disease Outbreak Responses in Developing Nations Leads to Detrimental Outcomes
title_sort exclusivity of cultural practices within emerging disease outbreak responses in developing nations leads to detrimental outcomes
topic Public Health
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8291361/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34295872
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.686540
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