The COVID-19 pandemic became a momentum for health workers to assert themselves as the front line of public health protection, together with pharmacists and nurses. Remember your struggle to wear PPE for hours and encourage each other at the night picket? With the graph of active cases declining day by day, the public can breathe a sigh of relief. But, that's not a reason to relax, right?
As the health workers, nurses also have a crucial role in preventing people from contracting the disease. Just like the COVID-19 outbreak, infectious diseases are also a scourge for many people. Viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites haunt daily activities that cause illness, death and disability.
Not only in hospitals, health centers, you can take part in preventing infectious diseases from infecting the community. Here are some ways that can be done.
1. Socialization of prevention methods
Provide information about disease prevention programs that are being intensified by the government. You can come across houses, from neighborhood to neighborhood, or even online. This is done to build awareness and vigilance in the community so that they care about certain diseases that are being focused on.
For example, take a look from the COVID-19 pandemic. The health workers take turns providing counseling (while maintaining a distance of course) about the importance of wearing masks, washing hands, and keeping a distance when doing activities in crowds. The same thing is also done in other programs such as family planning and pregnancy.
2. Health surveillance
Health surveillance is an activity of systematic and continuous observation of data and information on the incidence of disease or health problems. Also some conditions that affect the increase and transmission of disease or health problems. The aim is to obtain and provide information towards direct effective and efficient control, also the countermeasures.
You can always observe the development of data and information related to an infectious disease, from the increase in cases to the number of fatalities. You can determine the steps as quickly as possible when dealing with infected patients.
3. Control of risk factors
Knowing the factors that cause an increased risk of disease allows you to be one step ahead in prevention efforts. Certain behaviors and lifestyles can increase the risk of getting sick. For example, consuming alcohol and smoking in pancreatic cancer, poor sanitation which can lead to diarrhea and typhus, or unprotected sexual activity in HIV/AIDS cases.
However, all of these risk factors can be controlled and prevented. In socializing, always emphasize that these things have a bad impact on human health. The less the intensity of the activity carrying the risk factor, or even stopping, the better it will be for the community.
4. Immunization
Immunization aims to build immunity, either its individually or in groups. At least 70 percent of the population of an area or country must be immunized. No less important is the re-immunization (booster) which needs to be carried out at certain times to increase the population's immunity again.
You can help build community immunity by participating in giving immunizations. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses usually visited kindergarten, elementary and junior high schools to give injections to prevent measles, rubella and polio. Now, it's also for COVID-19 vaccine.
5. Mass Preventive Drug Distribution
This activity usually goes hand in hand with immunization. The drug is distributed to double the efficacy of the injected vaccine. Generally this is done on health problems such as filariasis and measles.
Those were the steps that nurses could take to prevent people from contracting the disease. Have you ever done some? Or maybe all of them?
