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Epidemiological Approach to the Hantavirus Outbreak and the Role of the Social Dimension of Health Care
Jorge Elias
,
Emiliano Biondo
,
Jorge Diaz
Issue: Volume 7, Issue 1, March 2021
Pages: 69-75
Received: 04 January 2021
Accepted: 20 February 2021
Published: 26 March 2021
DOI:
10.11648/j.jher.20210701.21
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Abstract: In late 2018, in the town of Epuyén, Argentine Patagonia, the outbreak of Andes hantavirus begins. Evidence led to the interhuman transmission hypothesis. The comparative analysis carried out by the National Administration of Laboratories and Health Institutes (ANLIS, Administración Nacional de Laboratorios e Institutos de Salud) Malbrán of Argentina showed that the viral genotype was Andes Sur. The percentage of genetic identity reached 99.9% and confirmed, univocally, that the transmission mechanism was from person to person. This finding indicates a unique and extraordinary event that required a multidimensional approach, incorporating the collective health approach to transform biomedical therapeutics through an intersectoral, interinstitutional and intercultural work based on the dynamics of social determination and its impact on the health/disease/attention/care process. The chain of contagion had 4 clusters with 34 confirmed cases and 11 deaths. Overall mortality was 32.4%, women doubling the number of deaths compared to men. This article presents not only the hard data of the outbreak, but also the observation of the socio-cultural context in which it took place and the value of social determination in the health care process, criteria without which selective respiratory isolation (ARS, aislamiento respiratorio selectivo), the main tool for containing the outbreak, would not have been possible in the multiethnic and multicultural context of the Patagonian region. Incidentally, 8.7% of the population of Chubut province recognizes itself as indigenous and more than half of the 100 communities are distributed in the area where the outbreak occurred. The concept of indigenous health is linked to a holistic view of balance between the individual and the universe, confronting the hegemony of the bio-model. This confrontation challenged the health team to look more deeply into the social collective and to find there the agreements and synergies that allowed the successful continuation of the intervention until the resolution and conclusion of the outbreak.
Abstract: In late 2018, in the town of Epuyén, Argentine Patagonia, the outbreak of Andes hantavirus begins. Evidence led to the interhuman transmission hypothesis. The comparative analysis carried out by the National Administration of Laboratories and Health Institutes (ANLIS, Administración Nacional de Laboratorios e Institutos de Salud) Malbrán of Argenti...
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An Artificial Intelligence Approach to Modeling in Social Science
Juan Carlos Jesus Vazquez
,
Julio Javier Castillo
,
Leticia Edith Constable
,
Marina Elizabeth Cardenas
,
Juan Carlos Guillermo Vazquez
Issue: Volume 7, Issue 1, March 2021
Pages: 58-68
Received: 04 January 2021
Accepted: 20 February 2021
Published: 17 March 2021
DOI:
10.11648/j.jher.20210701.20
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Abstract: Computer Science has contributed to social sciences since decades ago: connecting people that build virtual communities where the interactions can be investigated, developing tools for statistically analytics, designing models that allow the analysis and simulation of the most diverse types, among many others. In this article, we describe an artificial neural network to model a theoretical framework for risk, housing, and health problematic, called DRVS (Diagnostic methodology for risk determination of urban housing for health), which uses a holistic approach for community and environmental health. The methodology also exposes digital clinic history for families and communities, developed to support the acquisition of necessary data. This software has advantages for the transference and application of the DRVS in different locations since it constitutes an expert system for the determination of local social indexes and supports the quantitative validation process for the underlying social theory. On the other hand, as many artificial intelligence techniques, it has constraints: unlike explicit logic inferences, artificial neural networks work as «black boxes», not explaining how they got the result; they have a strong dependency of the representativeness of training data and introducing new knowledge that may improve their results and performance is difficult (new data, addition or remotion of determining factors for the underlying social model, weighting factors, etc.). This article also shows some techniques and ideas on how to deal with the identified constraints.
Abstract: Computer Science has contributed to social sciences since decades ago: connecting people that build virtual communities where the interactions can be investigated, developing tools for statistically analytics, designing models that allow the analysis and simulation of the most diverse types, among many others. In this article, we describe an artifi...
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Territorialize Comprehensive Local Risk Management and Information Systems: Co-building Knowledge in the Field of Environmental Health
Maria del Carmen Rojas
,
Ana Colombres
,
Silvina Hidalgo
,
Oscar Lopez
,
Daniel Machado
,
Viviana Mendoza
,
Patricia Montero
,
Analia Ocampo
Issue: Volume 7, Issue 1, March 2021
Pages: 39-48
Received: 04 January 2021
Accepted: 20 February 2021
Published: 09 March 2021
DOI:
10.11648/j.jher.20210701.18
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Abstract: At present, the act of thinking appears as idle and is displaced by the instrumental. Comprehensive local risk management (CLRM) and information systems (IS) in the field of environmental health (EH) are analyzed ignoring the actor's conception and the time from which they start. Common practice does not respect the ontological character that we recognize as artisanal and based on movements of social re-association and re-assembly. Because of this it is necessary to catch up with the innovations of the actors, in order to know and learn about the collective existence from their own point of view, without imposing any order, limiting diversity, teaching what they are or adding reflexivity to their practice. The purpose of this article is to challenge CLRM and IS as a technical answer without questions, versus a CLRM and IS as a territory, that is, as a space with questions based on institutions, procedures and concepts capable of bringing together and re-relating the social. For this purpose, we will analyze the science that moves in the dimension of philosophy and recover the passion that represents the question; the territory as a space of the singular and site of acting, where the relational and the symbolic are expressed crossed by capitals and fields that exceed the epistemological simplicity; equity and equality to reduce long-term risk; the moments of the processual logic of an SI in the reference framework: data, information, knowledge, communication for action (DIKCA); cognitive justice; the processes of co-building knowledge essentially constituted by the word and conversations that trigger processes. We affirm that environmental health is a key tool of social practice. It corresponds to all this vast set of practices and knowledge that a society sets in place to know its health and environment, in order to transform it. Therefore, the proposal is to cease understanding CLRM and SI as rational products, and to come to understand them as a human product and, therefore, made by humans who construct language a central feature of their existence. We believe that change is necessary, that new, or not so new problems cannot be solved with outdated ideas. However, acquiring and developing renewed ideas or concepts can create the false illusion that everything is easy, but it is not. The challenge is daunting, as much as the need is inescapable.
Abstract: At present, the act of thinking appears as idle and is displaced by the instrumental. Comprehensive local risk management (CLRM) and information systems (IS) in the field of environmental health (EH) are analyzed ignoring the actor's conception and the time from which they start. Common practice does not respect the ontological character that we re...
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Work and Nature: Collective Health Challenges Towards the Sustainable Development Goals After the COVID-19 Pandemic
Marcelo Amable
,
Rocio Gonzalez Francese
,
Cecilia Schneider
Issue: Volume 7, Issue 1, March 2021
Pages: 49-57
Received: 04 January 2021
Accepted: 20 February 2021
Published: 09 March 2021
DOI:
10.11648/j.jher.20210701.19
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Abstract: Work is a central concept to understand social metabolism. Human work is the process that getting the social metabolism that creates those goods necessary for to life. The industrial revolution laid the foundation for an insurmountable contradiction between capitalism and environmental sustainability. The advance of market power over the use of natural resources to sustain globalized lifestyles is responsible for various manifestations of the ecological crisis. As in the rest of the world, in Latin America this type of economic growth has a negative impact on ecosystems in general and on biodiversity in particular. A productive structure that is extractive and intensive of natural resources that not only show its unsustainability, but also its incapability to produce development and well-being. The current COVID-19 pandemic highlights the economic system's vulnerabilities on an unsuspected scale. The SDG issued in 2015, acknowledges the ecological crisis and recognition the impossibility of finding global governance mechanisms with regulatory capacity. The COVID-19 pandemic called into question the economic paradigm perspective on which some of the SDG are based: economic growth and globalization. It is the field of health where the impact of COVID-19 pushes SDG further away. The public health response is limited in the face of the impacts of an epidemic that strikes at the SDG's multiple dimensions. The crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is profound. The SDG are not exempt from that perspective, if they manage to prove themselves as guiding principles for global governance. We argue that the opportunity to find structural solutions with long-term horizons will rise from radical changes in the ways we produce, distribute and consume. Collective health could contribute to the redefinition of the SDG if it faces the challenge of a public health that takes up ecosocial approaches by redefining the social uses of work and nature. The first condition to initiate those structural changes is a progressive de-commodification of life. The second fundamental condition for sustainable welfare is the democratization of social life. Finally, collective health can contribute to redefine the SDG if faces the challenge of a public health that takes up eco-social approaches.
Abstract: Work is a central concept to understand social metabolism. Human work is the process that getting the social metabolism that creates those goods necessary for to life. The industrial revolution laid the foundation for an insurmountable contradiction between capitalism and environmental sustainability. The advance of market power over the use of nat...
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