Food Safety and Security: Discussion 4 Pulsenet

Pulsenet helps by ensuring the molecular subtyping of food born bacterial pathogens is analyzed. They help to ensure there are no epidemiologic issues. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) to compare fingerprints from several areas. There are subtyping work done for E. coli 0157:H7, Nontyphoidal salmonella serotypes, shigella and listeria monocytogenes. They are working on introducing more diseases into their repertoire of surveilled pathogens. Isolates from a few places are analyzed and compared against each other. They are responsible for performing public health surveillance, detecting them public health and epidemiological investigations, monitor and analyze mitigation actions.

There are several steps that have been developed to investigate epidemiologic illness outbreaks from food. Written plans provide information, legal and procedural help. They ensure that information is distributed and that federal and local laws are followed, especially security and confidentiality. Determining what causes deaths and the extent is also part of this informational gathering stage. They may look into environmental situations, hospital forms, behavioral or mental health facilities, immunization forms, disease registries and information on active cases.

First, they ensure the local stakeholders are providing data, support, surveillance and response to the situation. This involves them providing information on public health. Response, injury, exposure and how it can be monitored and investigated may also be directed to other researchers at this time, and to the general public. This is to ensure that a knowledgeable group is able to help determine if a case is involved in an outbreak. They can use this data to help determine where it may have come from.

Next, they perform a routine and incident based surveillance and determine information on the diseases and its symptoms. They analyze current cases and distribute information as necessary. The statistics and reports are provided to public health. Written plans should include actions to help bring the disease under control. This variety of information gathering and distribution and analyzation help to ensure the disease is brought under control and the infective product is discovered and eliminated.

The groups which are most at risk are identified. They then maintain a system which helps to identify health problems and threats such as environmental hazards. They respond to reports and work 24/7 to ensure people stay healthy. They provide and produce written plans of protocol in cases of diseases. They gather information the environment, hospital, registries and cases. The performance is measured to ensure the most accurate figures on disease effects and disease occurrence.

Determining the public health issues help to mitigate the problem. It helps to have the information there to ensure that public health officials are able to quickly and easily bring the problem under control. Monitoring the disease, producing a written plan, distributing information and mitigating the problems of the disease, they are able to locate the origin of the disease. This may involve training staff to help to effectively bring the disease under control. Information for managing, analyzing, collecting and ensuring the data may be electronic and the information can be distributed quickly. The quality, quickness and efficiency of the program is what helps to ensure that disease is kept under control and when it does come up, it is addressed quickly.