Thundon Ngamprasertchai

Since 2009, there have been six PHEIC declarations:
1. 2009 H1N1 (or swine flu) pandemic
2. 2014 polio declaration
3. 2014 outbreak of Ebola in Western Africa
4. 2015–16 Zika virus epidemic
5. 2018–20 Kivu Ebola epidemic
6. the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic

The purpose of PHEIC declaration is to get international attention on health risks which ext…[Read more]

I agree with you about time analysis air pollution related data. These information might represent the relation between incidence of air pollution related diseases and pollution level. For example, In Thailand, prevalence of chronic lung diseases are higher than others in Northern part.

– Yes, air pollution is the public health emergency (PHE). Air pollution is classified as hydro-meteorological group in PHE. It causes long term consequence on health such as allergy, chronic lung disease or cancer. In addition, it affects worldwide. Not only individual country concern but also global impact is considered.
– There are two…[Read more]

In case of diseases underestimation, these will lead to under recognition or poor prioritization by policy maker. They might disregard the importance of diseases. In contrast, when the surveillance is falsely alarmed or overestimation, these will contribute to workload burden and budget lost.

My idea about how information technology is integrated to outbreak investigation step are as follows;
1. Verification and outbreak confirmation -> Electronic reporting system
2. Find case systematically and record information and Perform descriptive epidemiology -> Electronic reporting system, Online platform data (eg Google sheet) and Spatial…[Read more]

The problem of scrub typhus is disease confirmation. Most of suspected cases were empirically treated with doxycycline then we followed clinical resolution without definite diagnosis. Positive of IFA test usually need 1-2 weeks which is not practical in our practice.

I agree with you about lack of research support regarding public health field. However, we must integrate public health or system surveillance to innovation. Since funder focus on innovation nowadays.

totally agree with you.

Of course, should be COVID-19 surveillance system. Nowadays there are almost 70 million people infected and nearly, 1.6 million deaths. Severity are varied among age group particularly in elderly. In addition, due to virus tolerability, they are highly transmissible by contact and droplets. All global organization are interested in COVID-19.…[Read more]

I would apply additional surveillance systems to COVID-19 as follows,
– Syndromic surveillance system; This will be used for person who returned from high-risk countries or had history of contact patients. If they have respiratory tract symptoms, doctor should test COVID-19. Since we have to control epidemic spreading.
– Both active and passive…[Read more]

In my point of view, a strength of public health surveillance in Thailand is “early warning”. The best scenario is the first episode of COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020. Thailand was the first country demonstrated infected case outside China mainland. This is because we detected early suspected cases inbound flight. All suspected should be pro…[Read more]