Online Course in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene

Tropical medicineand hygiene encompasses and emphasizes on laboratory science; clinical care; international field studies; country-wide programs for disease control, sanitation or hygiene and the application of technology in the fields of international medicine, non communicable and infectious diseases, immunology, virology, epidemiology, basic and molecular biology, etc.

Tropical Medicine and Hygiene

Tropical medicinerefers to the practice of medicinethat deals with health issues occurring intropicaland subtropical regions. It is an interdisciplinary branch of medicine that ensures diagnosis and treatment of parasitic and infectious diseases that are difficult to be controlled in a tropical environment due to poor resources. It also encompasses sub specialties of travel medicine, refugee healthcare and expedition of remote or wilderness medicines.
Tropical Medicine refers to global, geographical or international health in regions of tropical countries that tend to have minimum economic resources, sanitation and hygiene resulting in more poverty, increased malnutrition and poorly developed infrastructure. Poor sanitation, hygiene and overcrowding can expose populations to higher risk of gastrointestinal and respiratory infection while malnutrition impairs innate defence mechanism against infections. Some of the reasons for mortality and morbidity in tropical areas include malaria, HIV and tuberculosis; gastrointestinal parasites causing anaemia and malnutrition; non-specific respiratory and gastrointestinal infection that causes acute respiratory syndromes and diarrhoea; non communicable diseases like cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancer. The diagnosis and treatment of children and adults should be available for all tropical diseases including malaria, leprosy and diseases of the eye, skin and gut.
Water, sanitation and hygiene are recognized but under-prioritized under global disease prevention and control efforts. The control, prevention and elimination of diseases are achieved by increased sanitation and reduced environmental contamination; safe clean potable water available for drinking, food preparation, treatment and care of infected patients in healthcare facilities; publicising good hygiene practices; improvement in water resource and waste management to control vector borne diseases; reducing contact with unsafe or contaminated water and increasing accessibility to various services for individuals living with stigmatization and disability. Long term mission should entail promotion of global health through the prevention and control of infectious and other tropical diseases that disproportionately affect the poor. To control, prevent, eliminate and eradicate tropical diseases a public health approach integrating diverse treatment or interventions and prevention strategies needs to be proposed.

Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Online Courses and Programs

Online courses and training programs contribute to improvement in global health through excellence in teaching and advanced training of policies and practices in tropical medicine, national and international public health. These courses may be long or short that give in-depth coverage of healthcare issues and diseases encountered in poverty settings of tropical world. They cover areas of health service systems, health policy, social and environmental influences on health. They also define biologic, epidemiologic, environmental and social aspects of tropical diseases. These programs acknowledge national and global health concerns to further understand full complexity of these health issues; expand the limits of multi-disciplinary research and epidemiological thinking; define, develop, design and disseminate methods and tools for conducting rigorous research, data collection and analysis on topics related to tropical disease or medicine. They provide information on activities that embrace the health needs of population at all levels in various countries. They can also help evaluate and plan disease prevention, treatment and control programs.
These courses provide strong scientific basis for diagnosis, prevention, treatment and control of tropical health problems.The curriculum consist of detailed case studies of tropical diseases pertaining to implementation of diagnosis, treatment and preventive control measures; recent updated and advanced diagnostic methodologies; human behaviour associated with the local perceptions of the disease and transmission of infections; laboratory research focused on diagnostic methods for identification of parasites and vectors in body tissue, blood and other body fluids. The topics covered include HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases; malaria and other vector borne diseases; vector biology and control of tuberculosis; vaccine development and distribution. One such online program of Master in Advanced PG Diploma inTropical Medicine, Surveillance and Immunization is available at James Lind Institute.