Chester County Medicine Winter 2019 - 28
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2018
A Public Health
Retrospective
BY JOHN P. MAHER, MD, MPH
Every year, around mid-December, and as the holiday season
starts winding down, it is customary for the news media (TV,
radio, newspapers and news magazines) to start the recap of what
they consider the "Top Stories" of the previous 12 months. These
Top-10 or Top-20 stories generally cover a wide gamut of those
stories, issues and events which caught the public's (and especially
the media's) attention as judged by the amount of headlines and
editorial space taken up that year. They are mostly stories about
political events and personages, spots, economics, entertainment,
crime and punishment, and finally, the "passing" (no one just dies
anymore) of famous and important people.
However, unless a particular story covering a health or medical
issue lends itself to a certain kind of notoriety ("if it bleeds, it
leads") or political "spin" (e.g., its effects on free trade, the impact
on international trade or our allies) or can be tied to the issues of
illegal immigration, the mass media do not always give those topics
the same level of coverage which many health care professionals
might think they deserve.
From that standpoint, at least the US Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (the CDC) did put out a news release in
December highlighting those health issues and topics which had
occupied much of their time and attention during 2018, and with
much thanks on our part, we have used their documentation as
our starting point for this article.
28 CHESTER COUNT Y Medicine | WINTER 2019
And so, we have decided to put together this article on the
top medical and public health-related topics of 2018. Clearly,
of course, no one article could cover every single health/medical
story of 2018 in just a few pages. Thus we were forced to pick and
choose from among all of those we felt might have far-reaching
public health impact for the general public as well as for our
professional colleagues despite what seemed to us to be less than
adequate coverage by the mass media.
To start with, since we cannot cover everything here, we have
a few words about global or international health issues which
could affect the USA. The CDC is actively involved with African
nations and the WHO in helping the response to the second
largest Ebola outbreak in history in the Democratic Republic of
Congo. Staff and resources are supplied and emphasis is on rapid
response, proper preventive care, and experimental vaccine usage.
Most Americans are aware (or ought to be) that a large percentage of our food products, both meat and produce, as well as
such things as cut flowers and manufactured goods, are imported
from third world countries. So, the potential exists for accidental
or deliberate contamination of such goods. Similarly, some of
our contaminated food-borne outbreaks continue to be traced
or linked to large produce farms not just in Central America but
also in our own country, particularly in the southwest and western
coastal areas.
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