Recent Communicable Disease Outbreaks Highlight Gaps in Public Health Systems
The U.S. has recently had outbreaks of a number of infectious diseases, such as measles, mpox and HIV. These outbreaks have exposed critical gaps that exist in public health systems, according to Doctor Monica Gandhi, a medicine professor at UCSF (University of California, San Francisco). She explains that these outbreaks have highlighted the various vulnerabilities that exist in an environment that is already plagued by worsening staff shortages and funding shortfalls. She points out that vaccine coverage is dropping rapidly, especially over recent years. Such a trend is creating room for vaccine-preventable infectious diseases like measles to re-emerge and affect a lot more people. The current policies of…
