Articles

The Value of Knowledge Translation in an Infectious Disease Context: The COVID-19 Pandemic Perspective

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As of 2021, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is evident in every facet of life, despite the availability of knowledge to prevent or mitigate the spread of infectious diseases. Infectious disease pandemics will continue to be a global challenge, and yet the hesitancy of decision makers to utilize the plethora of evidence based strategies in a pandemic response threatens the future global health security. Therefore, this paper focuses on exploring how knowledge translation (KT) practices can be integrated into infectious disease prevention and control using the current COVID-19 pandemic to identify KT barriers. By continually synthesizing and incorporating research findings into routine decision making processes, public health institutions can adequately prepare health systems to manage a pandemic. The application of KT can be approached from four different stages: synthesis of information, dissemination of knowledge, exchange of knowledge, and ethical application of knowledge. Using the four stages of KT, the following propositions were made: investing in links between knowledge synthesis and utilization, engaging broader stakeholders in knowledge dissemination activities, creating effective two-way communication lines between knowledge producers and users, and strengthening knowledge utilizing activities. By demonstrating the utility of applying the four KT stages in an infectious disease pandemic context, it is hoped that more discussions and research is stimulated to engage the incorporation of KT into future outbreak responses.

Improving India’s Pandemic Response through a Health Information System Reform

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Despite stringent lockdown measures to curb the spread of the 2019 Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), India remains vulnerable to an uncontrolled rise in the number of cases and deaths. Furthermore, in spite of the high number of recorded cases, the actual case counts may be much higher due to poor data reporting of probable and confirmed cases of COVID-19 from all of India’s states. Being a populous country with the potential to become the world’s COVID-19 epicenter, it should be the Indian government’s top priority to strengthen India’s health information system (HIS) to support their infectious disease response.

To ensure that this paper is guided by current research on India’s HIS performance, a search strategy was developed on Ovid MEDLINE using database-specific subject headings and text words. The search terms used included: “health information systems” AND “India” AND “COVID-19” OR “Coronavirus.”

Most district level COVID-19 information management is still paper-based, and with India’s vast terrain, this approach is prone to data compilation errors. Furthermore, India’s fragmented HIS has led to ineffective collaboration between COVID-19 response agencies at the central, state, and district levels, thereby creating barriers pertaining to the compilation and coordination of COVID-19 data.

Investing in the use of technology is a viable approach to strengthen the country’s HIS performance during an infectious disease pandemic. To address the challenges associated with India’s fragmented HIS, the government is encouraged to implement a national regulatory body to monitor health information inputs and outputs.

What are the Recent Questions of Public about Workplace?

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This paper presents the short results of one-time data observation about a very actual subject. Workplaces are strongly impacted by the confinements due to Covid-19. The research focus is to get public’s views momentously and interpret them with a semiotic look. Finally, the results bring some research propositions and a conceptual model.

The Effect of Nanogold-Nanosilver for Immune Enhancement of Drug Abuse Victims in Areas Affected by COVID-19

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The development of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Indonesia is increasing, but until now there is no specific drug to prevent the virus. Therefore, it is necessary to do a research to produce a drug that can prevent this virus. Efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and to avoid contracting the virus can be done by strengthening the immune system. Currently, the development of nanogold and nanosilver utilization occurs very rapidly, especially in the health sector due to its antibacterial and antioxidant properties. In this research, nanogold-nanosilver was presented in the form of drinking water that can be consumed directly. The purpose of this research was to find out the effect of nanogold-nanosilver health drinking water on immune enhacement in terms of anxiety level, stress level, and sleep quality. This research used one group pretest-posttest design. Data collection was conducted through observation and interviews with 75 victims of drug abuse who live in areas affected by COVID-19. Data were analyzed using one paired T-test on SPSS version 25. From the statistical test results obtained p-value 0.000 in all three aspects, it means that nanogold-nanosilver had an effect to boost the immune system.

Immune Response to SARS-CoV-2 Infection

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In December 2019 a new type of coronaviruses appeared in China and named Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the disease associated with this virus is called Coronavirus Disease 2019 or COVID-19. Currently, COVID19 is the main global health threat. In this review, we focus in the current knowledge of immune response to SARS-CoV-2. Dysregulation of immune system, such as elevation levels of proinflammatory mediators and their roles in disease progression and pathogenesis as well as imbalance between innate and adaptive immune cells, are discussed in this review.