1.Trade, Wars and the Venereal Disease: VD Epidemic and Control of Korea in the late Nineteen and early Twentieth Century.
Korean Journal of Medical History 2008;17(2):239-255
This paper examines the spread of venereal disease from the Opening of Korea to the early Japanese colonial period. It focuses on the formation and expansion of Japanese settlement in Korea, the influence of wars, and the state control of VD. The Opening of Korea made the foreign settlement, and Japanese licensed prostitution flourished in Japanese settlement. According to the First Annual Report of the Korean Government Hospital(1886) and Gyelimuisa(1887), VD patients occupied 18.3% of outpatients in Jejungwon hospital of Seoul and 8.9% of outpatients in Busan hospital. Directly after the Opening of Korea, Korean people's VD became lesser critical than Japanese people's VD. But the expansion of Japanese settlement and outbreak of two wars such as Sino-Japanese War and Russo-Japanese War made worse Korean people's VD. According to the Residency-General resources(1904-1909), syphilis patients was registered in 0.8~6.6%(average 3.6%). If it add to gonorrhea and chancroid patients which often could not be found out by the naked eyes, the number of VD patients will be increase. Ji Seok-yeong(1855-1935), the earliest smallpox vaccinarian in Korea, asserted the need of VD control. Though he warned men bought sex as well as prostitutes became the main culprit of VD diffusion, he supported licensed prostitution because of realistic possibility. The Great Han Empire(1897-1910) tried to control the lower grade whore, and gathered prostitutes in some area by police power. After Japanese annexation of Korea, while Japanese has gradually decreased in VD patients, Korean has gradually increased in VD patients.
Colonialism/history
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Disease Outbreaks/*history/prevention & control
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Female
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History, 19th Century
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History, 20th Century
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Humans
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Japan
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Korea/epidemiology
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Male
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Prostitution/history
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Sexually Transmitted Diseases/*history/prevention & control
3.Vaccines for pandemic influenza. The history of our current vaccines, their limitations and the requirements to deal with a pandemic threat.
Annals of the Academy of Medicine, Singapore 2008;37(6):510-517
Fears of a potential pandemic due to A(H5N1) viruses have focussed new attention on our current vaccines, their shortcomings, and concerns regarding global vaccine supply in a pandemic. The bulk of current vaccines are inactivated split virus vaccines produced from egg-grown virus and have only modest improvements compared with those first introduced over 60 years ago. Splitting, which was introduced some years ago to reduce reactogenicity, also reduces the immunogenicity of vaccines in immunologically naïve recipients. The A(H5N1) viruses have been found poorly immunogenic and present other challenges for vaccine producers which further exacerbate an already limited global production capacity. There have been some recent improvements in vaccine production methods and improvements to immunogenicity by the development of new adjuvants, however, these still fall short of providing timely supplies of vaccine for all in the face of a pandemic. New approaches to influenza vaccines which might fulfil the demands of a pandemic situation are under evaluation, however, these remain some distance from clinical reality and face significant regulatory hurdles.
Animals
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Birds
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Disease Outbreaks
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prevention & control
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statistics & numerical data
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Global Health
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History, 20th Century
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History, 21st Century
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Humans
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Influenza A Virus, H5N1 Subtype
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isolation & purification
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Influenza Vaccines
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history
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Influenza in Birds
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epidemiology
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prevention & control
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Influenza, Human
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epidemiology
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prevention & control
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World Health Organization
4.Specific features of the contact history of probable cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome.
Wan-Nian LIANG ; Min LIU ; Qi CHEN ; Ze-Jun LIU ; Xiong HE ; Xue-Qin XIE
Biomedical and Environmental Sciences 2005;18(2):71-76
OBJECTIVETo describe the specific features of the contact history of probable cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Beijing.
METHODSData of SARS cases notified from the Beijing Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention (BCDC) and supplemented by other channels were collected. All the data were analyzed by descriptive epidemiology.
RESULTS(1) The number of probable cases with contact history was significantly higher than the excluded cases. (2) The proportion of probable cases with contact history descended with epidemic development, but this situation did not occur in health care workers (HCWs). (3) The fatality rate of probable cases with contact history was significantly higher than the cases without contact history (OR = 1.489). (4) The proportion of probable cases with contact history was 85.86% among health care workers, which was significantly higher than that of non-health care workers (85.86% v.s. 56.44%, OR=4.69).
CONCLUSIONS(1) The susceptible persons with contact history may not get infected, and the contact history is just a sufficient condition of infecting SARS; (2) There are 3 conceivable reasons for the descending trend of the proportion in probable cases with contact history; (3) The contact history is one of the risk factors of the death of SARS cases; (4) The risk of contacting with SARS among health care workers is approximately 5 times higher than that of non-HCWs.
China ; Contact Tracing ; Data Interpretation, Statistical ; Disease Outbreaks ; Health Personnel ; Humans ; Medical History Taking ; Occupational Exposure ; Risk Factors ; Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome ; epidemiology ; prevention & control ; transmission