It is vital to emphasize that what is important in this exercise is not the absolute number of points given to a disease, but rather the relative position of the disease to others, and the cut-off point chosen. After ranking the scores, the subcommittee chose a cut-off of 13 points to recommend a disease for [...]
The definition of ‘potential to drive public health policy’ implies that other criteria of incidence, severity, risk perception and preventability should be considered in determining the potential to drive public health policy. The factor is divided into three levels: ‘low’ with a score of 1; ‘medium’ with a score of 2; and ‘high’ with a [...]
Severity is defined as ‘most likely outcome’ and classified into three groups. One point is assigned to the disease if it is of short duration and the patient completely recovers. Five points are assigned if the most likely outcome is death; for example, HIV, AIDS and rabies were each assigned a score of 5. POTENTIAL [...]
The World Health Organization (WHO) is interested in all communicable diseases to some extent; however, cholera, plague and yellow fever are subject to international health regulations. Canada must collect and report information about cases of these diseases as an international duty. Five points were awarded to the three diseases. Five points were awarded to measles [...]
Before 1987, there was no mechanism in place to evaluate newly emerging diseases and compare them with the diseases that were being reported. Accordingly, in 1987, ACE established a subcommittee on communicable diseases to develop a systematic process to determine which communicable diseases should be monitored at the national level. The subcommittee asked which diseases [...]
The federal government has collected information on communicable diseases since 1924, under the legislative authority of the Statistics Canada Act and the Health Canada Act. Aggregate data on communicable diseases was initially collected and collated by The Dominion Bureau of Statistics (later changed to Statistics Canada), but this responsibility, with the exception of tuberculosis, was [...]
Alendronate. Alendronate is available for the treatment of Paget’s disease in most western countries (Fosamax 40). The recommended dose is 40 mg daily for 6 months to be taken with a large glass of water (>200 ml) on getting up in the morning after an overnight fast. The patient is instructed not to take anything [...]
