Medical tourism

Provides an outline of the current research around medical tourism, especially its impact on Australians. Background Medical tourism is a burgeoning industry in our region. It involves patients traveling outside of their home country for medical treatment. Objective This article provides an outline of the current research around medical tourism, especially its impact on Australians. Discussion Patients are increasingly seeking a variety of medical treatments abroad, particularly those involving cosmetic surgery and dental treatment, often in countries in South-East Asia. Adverse events may occur during medical treatment abroad, which raises medico-legal and insurance issues, as well as concerns regarding follow-up of patients. General practitioners need to be prepared to offer advice, including travel health advice, to patients seeking medical treatment abroad. &nbsp

Considerations in Mass Casualty and Disaster Management

[Extract] Disasters have increased in frequency over the past century. A number of high profile disasters have also dominated news headlines in the past decade raising the media and community awareness, of disasters. This has been across the full spectrum of disasters and as illustrated in Table 1 has included terrorist bombings, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis and floods

Chitosan and Its Modifications: Are They Possible Vehicles for Gene Therapy?

[Extract] In gene therapy, the most important step is how to effectively deliver the therapeutic gene to the target cells or organ. At present, there are two methods, which are those using a viral and a non-viral vector system. The most common viral vectors that have been used include retroviruses, herpes simplex viruses, lentiviruses, adenoviruses and adeno-associated viruses (Oligino et al., 2000). The advantages of most viral vectors are high transfection efficiency and fast transcription of the foreign material inserted in the viral genome. However, a number of disadvantages have also been described, such as poor target-specificity, low capacity to incorporate foreign deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequence to their genome (Mansouri et al., 2004), toxic and inflammatory effects, wild– type mutations, potential oncogenic effects (Lee et al., 1998), and, in particular, unwanted immune responses. In clinical trials of gene replacement therapy using viral vectors, significant adverse effects have been reported, including a fatal inflammatory response associated with adenoviral vector (Raper et al., 2003), and the development of acute leukaemia in recipients of ex-vivo, adenoviral vector-transduced hematopoietic cells (Woods et al., 2006). Intravenous adenoviral vector has also resulted in high liver toxicity due to uptake by hepatocytes or Kupffer cells of the liver reticular endothelial system, immediately following systemic administration

An Impact Factor for Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease

Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease (TMID or TropicalMed) was established in 2016 [1] as the Official Publication of The Australasian College of Tropical Medicine [2] and published by the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) based in Switzerland and many other countries [3], being one of the oldest online publishers still existing after 25 years. It was founded with an international editorial board that continues to expand and organize under the leadership of A/Professor John Frean, Editor-in-Chief, from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases and Wits Research Institute for Malaria, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, and Professor Peter A Leggat, Deputy Editor-in-Chief, from James Cook University, Australia. It is indexed by all of the major indexing and abstracting services, including PubMed and Web of Science. Hence, it is tracked for impact factor and recently received its first one, a very creditable 3.711

The historical decline of tobacco smoking among Australian physicians: 1964–1997

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Physicians occupy an important position as tobacco control exemplars and their own smoking habits are known to influence how effective they may be in such a role.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A comprehensive review of all published manuscripts describing tobacco usage rates and tobacco control activities in the Australian medical profession between 1964 and 1997.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Some of the earliest surveys revealed that around one-quarter of Australian physicians were smoking in the mid twentieth century, a rate which rapidly declined in the 1970s and 1980s, with reductions beyond that achieved by the general population.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Overall, our review suggests that not only do contemporary Australian physicians smoke at very low rates when compared internationally, but that an active professional community can also make a real difference to the lifestyle choices of its own members.</p

Acute Lymphatic Filariasis Infection in United States armed forces personnel deployed to the Pacific area of operations during World War II provides important lessons for today

The deployment of United States (US) Armed Forces personnel into the central Pacific islands of Samoa and Tonga, which is highly-endemic for lymphatic filariasis (LF), resulted in thousands of cases of the acute form of this disease and greatly reduced their ability to carry out their mission. The major driving factor for the intensity of transmission was the aggressiveness and efficiency of the Aedes species mosquito vectors, especially the day-biting Ae. Polynesiensis. The paper reminds us of the danger that tropical diseases can pose for troops sent into endemic areas and constant and careful surveillance that is required to prevent rapid resurgence of Aedes-transmitted LF in populations, where the LF elimination program has been successful

COVID-19: Current Challenges and Future Perspectives.

[Extract] This article belongs to the Special Issue COVID-19: Current Challenges and Future Perspectives. At the time of submission for publication (7 January 2022), COVID-19, named by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 February 2020, had caused more than 296.5 million cases and over 5.5 million deaths with over 2.6 million new cases in the past 24 h [2]. The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly affected the capacity of health systems providing essential health care [1], but more than 9.195 billion vaccine doses have been administered as of 10 January 2021 [2]

Causal pathways of flood related river drowning deaths in Australia

Introduction: Globally, flooding is the most common of all natural disasters and drowning is the leading cause of death during floods. In Australia, rivers are the most common location of drowning and experience flooding on a regular basis. Methods: A cross-sectional, total population audit of all known unintentional river flood related fatal drownings in Australia between 1-July-2002 and 30-June-2012 was conducted to identify trends and causal factors. Results: There were 129 (16.8%) deaths involving river flooding, representing a crude drowning rate of 0.06 per 100,000 people per annum. Half (55.8%) were due to slow onset flooding, 27.1% flash flooding and the type of flooding was unknown in 17.1% of cases. Those at an increased risk were males, children, driving (non-aquatic transport) and victims who were swept away (p<0.01). When compared to drownings in major cities, people in remote and very remote locations were 79.6 and 229.1 times respectively more likely to drown in river floods. Common causal factors for falls into flooded rivers included being alone and a blood alcohol content ≥0.05% (for adults). Non-aquatic transport incident victims were commonly the drivers of four wheel drive vehicles and were alone in the car, whilst attempting to reach their own home or a friend’s. Discussion: Flood related river drownings are preventable. Strategies for prevention must target causal factors such as being alone, influence of alcohol, type/size of vehicle, and intended destination. Strategies to be explored and evaluated include effective signage, early warning systems, alternate routes and public awareness for drivers

COVID19: Current Challenges and Future Perspectives

This Special Issue focuses on recent global research on the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The disease is caused by a novel virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) named the virus SARS-CoV-2, as it is genetically related to the coronavirus responsible for the SARS outbreak of 2003. While related, the two viruses are quite different in their behaviour. At the time of submission for publication (7 January 2022), COVID-19, named by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 February 2020, had caused more than 296.5 million cases and over 5.5 million deaths with over 2.6 million new cases in the past 24 h. The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly affected the capacity of health systems providing essential health care, but more than 9.195 billion vaccine doses have been administered as of 10 January 2021. There have been 22 papers published upon peer review acceptance in this Special Issue, including one editorial, twelve research papers, three review papers and seven other papers, including one perspective, two case reports, one brief report, two viewpoints and one commentary. They each contribute to a much better understanding of COVID-19