Dr Ghebrehewet is Director of Health Protection in Cheshire and Merseyside, UK. He graduated from medical school in Ethiopia, where he worked as a GP and Regional Director of Public Health Programmes. Dr Ghebrehewet has extensive experience in communicable disease control and health protection, with specialist interests in immunisation, Emergency Preparedness Resilience and Response (EPRR) and environmental public health practice. He has published widely, presented at regional, national and international conferences and is the lead for Health Protection in the Masters of Public Health at the University of Liverpool and lead public health trainer in Cheshire & Merseyside.

Dr Stewart is a Glaswegian born, bred and educated. Following a successful career of around 20 years in the northern mountains of Pakistan as a rural GP, Alex returned to the UK where he trained in Public Health in Cheshire and Merseyside. He was a Consultant in Health Protection for eleven years, with special interest in the acute and long-term effects of the environment on health. He has investigated and responded to many complex public health issues, and has developed an understanding of how to support local and national agencies and the public in the face of limited information, incomplete understanding and often great uncertainty.

Dr Baxter has been a Consultant in Communicable Disease Control for 20 years, working in the Stockport and Greater Manchester area. Over the last 25 years he has run successfully the UK National Immunisation Conference for Health Care Workers; provided a specialist immunisation clinics at the District General Hospital seeing around 15,000 patients; and led childhood and adult immunisation programmes and training in Stockport. During this time, Dr Baxter contributed to the delivery of a consistently high childhood immunisation uptake rates, and Stockport achieved highest influenza vaccination uptake in pregnant women in the country over the last four years. Dr Baxter has published widely and supervised several PhD theses.

Dr Shears is former consultant microbiologist and Director of Infection Control Arrowe Park Wirral University Hospital, with a special interest in the epidemiology and control of health care associated infections. Dr Shears was previously senior lecturer in medical microbiology at Liverpool University/Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, with postgraduate teaching responsibilities and public health microbiology projects in Sudan and Bangladesh. He was a member of WHO working groups on antimicrobial resistance, and public health laboratory development. He is the author of over 60 peer reviewed publications, has contributed chapters in several books, and is an Assistant Editor of the Journal of Hospital Infection. In the 1980's he was a medical officer in refugee programmes in Somalia, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Lebanon.

David Conrad is a Consultant in Public Health at Hertfordshire County Council. He holds an honorary research post at the University of Liverpool and has published papers in several peer reviewed journals. In collaboration with colleagues from the Centre for Men's Health at Leeds Metropolitan University, he has edited three books: Men's Health: How To Do It (Radcliffe), Promoting Men's Mental Health (Radcliffe) and Sports-Based Health Interventions: Case Studies from Around the World (Springer).

Dr Kliner was born and educated in Glasgow, Scotland. She graduated from University of Leeds with a degree in Medicine, and a BA in Healthcare Ethics. She has an interested in infectious diseases, and in particular TB and HIV, which developed during clinical training, guideline development work with WHO, and academic work within Good Shepherd Hospital in Swaziland, with the University of Leeds. She currently works as a Consultant in Communicable Disease Control in Greater Manchester.

• Prelims


• Section 1: The basics


• 1: Sam Ghebrehewet, Alex G. Stewart, and Ian Rufus: What is health protection?


• 2: Sam Ghebrehewet and Alex G. Stewart: Who is involved in health protection?


• 3: Sam Ghebrehewet, Alex G. Stewart, and Ian Rufus: Key principles of health protection


• 4: Paul Shears and Dave Harvey: The basics of microbiology


• Section 2: Infectious disease control case studies and scenarios


• 5: Ken Lamden, Sam Rowell, and Andrew Fox: E. Coli O157


• 6: Rita Huyton, Sam Ghebrehewet, and David Baxter: Hepatitis B


• 7: Dave Harvey and Andrea Ledgerton: Hospital multi-resistant infections


• 8: Joanna Cartwright, Anjila Shah, and Sam Ghebrehewet: Influenza


• 9: Nick Phin, Falguni Naik, Elaine Stanford , and Sam Ghebrehewet: Legionnaire s disease


• 10: David Baxter, Gill Marsh, and Sam Ghebrehewet: Measles


• 11: Sam Ghebrehewet, David Conrad, and Gill Marsh: Meningitis and meningococcal disease


• 12: Musarrat Afza, Marko Petrovic, and Sam Ghebrehewet: Tuberculosis (TB)


• Section 3: Emergency dreparedness, resilience and response (EPRR), and business continuity case studies and scenarios


• 13: Alex G. Stewart, Sam Ghebrehewet, and David Baxter: Business continuity: Hospital ward closures due to norovirus


• 14: Laura Mitchem, Henrietta Harrison, and Alex G. Stewart: Fire and fear: Immediate and long term health aspects


• 15: Angie Bone, Alan Wilton, and Alex G. Stewart: Flooding and health: Immediate and long term implications


• Section 4: Environmental Public Health practice case studies and scenarios


• 16: John Reid, Giovanni Leonardi, and Alex G. Stewart: Air pollution and respiratory diseases


• 17: Alex G. Stewart, Sam Ghebrehewet, and Richard Jarvis: Cancer and chronic disease cluster


• Section 5: Health protection tools


• 18: Paul Shears, Andrea Ledgerton, and Rita Huyton: Hospital and community infection control


• 19: David Baxter, Sam Ghebrehewet, and Gill Marsh: Vaccination and immunisation


• 20: Sam Ghebrehewet and Alex G. Stewart: Incident and outbreaks management


• 21: Roberto Vivancos, Giovanni Leonardi, and Alex Elliott: Health protection surveillance


• 22: Paul Cleary, Sam Ghebrehewet, and David Baxter: Essential statistics and epidemiology


• 23: Sam Ghebrehewet, Paul Cleary, Merav Kliner, and Ewan Wilkinson: Conducting epidemiological and analytical studies


• 24: Merav Kliner, Ewan Wilkinson, and Sam Ghebrehewet: Using evidence to guide practice in health protection


• 25: Amal Rushdy and Sam Ghebrehewet: Quality assurance and audit


• Section 6: New and emerging health protection issues


• 26: Alex G. Stewart, Sam Ghebrehewet, and Peter MacPherson: New and emerging infectious diseases


• 27: Alex Dobney and Greg Hodgson: New and emerging environmental hazards / situations


• 28: Virginia Murray, Amina Aitsi-Selmi, and Alex G. Stewart: Global disasters and risk reduction strategies


• 29: Richard Jarvis, Angie Bone, and Alex G. Stewart: Sustainability


• Appendices


• Appendix 1: SIMCARDs for dealing with common infectious diseases


• Appendix 2: Abridged SIMCARDs for dealing with infectious diseases


• Appendix 3: Brief SIMCARDs for dealing with infectious diseases


• Appendix 4: SIMCARDs for dealing with emergency situations/hazards


• Appendix 5: SIMCARDs for dealing with environmental hazards/situations


• Appendix 6: Health Protection legislation (England) guidance 2010: Notifiable diseases


• Appendix 7: The reporting of causative agents from local laboratory to local health protection team (PHE)


• Appendix 8: Vaccine recommendations following case(s) of probable or confirmed invasive meningococcal disease


• Appendix 9: Template agenda for health protection incident and outbreak meetings


• Appendix 10: The health background to statutory pollutant controls within the UK and Europe


• Glossary


• Index