Background

Assessment

The main problem that needs to be addressed in the present assessment section is the health status and burden of disease among the Indigenous Australians. Indigenous Australians are descendants of people living in Australia before the European Colonisation in the late 18^th century. They have been recorded to experience a significant burden of diseases due to prevalent nutritional deficits in their meals. There have been over 284 loss of lives for the cause of illnesses per 1000 indigenous people living in Australia (Al-Yaman 2017). The Torres Strait Islander community’s Indigenous population has poor health outcomes compared to non-indigenous counterparts. The experience of colonization’s long-term impact causes inequalities in indigenous health, involving physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing. They face a prolonged lack of access to healthy food and subsequently meet poor nutrition intake, resulting in heightened diseases in their community. Rural indigenous individuals live in dire poverty as compared to urban Australians. They also face limited access to education, work opportunities, and social services. The main factors which are to be considered for this scenario are the remoteness of the Indigenous communities, non availability of proper food supply, healthcare services located far away and lack of resources to meet the daily needs. These are the factors or variables, which decreases the quality of Indigenous lives by 1.4 times and increase the disease burden by 2.3 times.

Surveys demonstrate malnourished patients have increased hospital stays, high mortality rates, frequent readmission, and overall poor long-term survival rates. It is advocated by the Dieticians Association of Australia to facilitate early detection and management of nutritional assessments and provide training to healthcare providers and dieticians. A survey for the demographics will be conducted for both the Indigenous and Non-Indigenous (chosen number of people) in this section. The demographic data will include the following variables – Socioeconomic status and medical history. Then, the resource availability data will be collected – Health resources and Food sources. These are the four main variables, which will be used to appraise the outlines problem present in the above section.  Assessment Of Health Status And Burden Of Disease Among Indigenous Australians Essay Paper

The survey will be collected first and recorded in a tabular format. The answers of the participants will be recorded as 1, 2, 3 and 4, for four types of answers. For example, for a question – “Please rate the availability of health services in your area on a scale of – 1, 2, 3, 4. “1” being the lowest availability and “4” being the highest availability rating. Then the collected data will be analysed to assess the difference between health quality and disease burden in the among the Indigenous and Non-indigenous population. The data will then be evaluated by using a specific public health formula, derived based on the available data of the case study. In this way, the assessment processes will be implemented for the chosen section of the population.

Evaluation can be stated as one of the most significant processes, needed to find out whether the chosen strategy of assessment of data collection and analysis was successful or not. Therefore, the chosen assessment technique in the previous sections will be evaluated by the process given below:

Data Collection Techniques

The collected data will then be evaluated by using the relationship formula –

In the above equation, K is the constant.

The above formula will be used to understand whether follow up is needed to improve the values of Non-Indigenous population or not. The constant K also needs proper evaluation in order to analyse the presence of any specific inaccuracies. If, the relationships given above as equation formulas are satisfied by the collected data, then the problem will be successfully assessed. However, after the assessment, the follow up studies for addressing the problem identified by the equation needs to be resolved. The evaluation will be used to identify the major strengths and drawbacks of the assessment process and will also be a major guide for the follow up studies. If the previous assessment technique is evaluated successfully, the previously analysed mistakes can be easily identified and resolved in the future follow up studies.

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Assessment

The concerned patient in the case study is a child affected by the infestation of hookworms in the intestine. Hookworm eggs spread in the feces of individuals, and common symptoms of abdominal pain, skin rashes, stomach disorders, and diarrhea are common (Loukas et al. 2016). Hookworms have hook-like heads used for attachment to intestinal walls. These parasitic worms are transmitted through the soil as the infection spreads due to exposure to contaminated soil. A nutritional assessment tool can focus on the main problem with the patient – Iron levels in Blood and Hookworm in the stool based Ova samples. These problems can be identified by using a nutritional assessment tool which needs to be followed up with a laboratory diagnosis also. The assessment technique will involve the assessment form-based data collection based on the laboratory data. The planning of the assessment has been given below.

The laboratory data of the patient will be first observed – Blood Iron level and Ova Hookworm presence. These two data will be observed and the patient’s current condition will be assessed. There are many nutritional assessment techniques of which survey method was selected for the present assessment. The survey process was selected because it is the easiest methods of assessing a patient by an individual. On the other hand, this type of survey based data collection process associated with the assessment of a patient was done in another research study (Bogoch et al., 2019). Various nutritional assessment techniques like surveys, screening, surveillance, and interventions. “Nutritional risk screening (NRS)” and “patient-generated subjective global assessment (PG-SGA)” are standard tools for screening nutritional inputs by patients (Castillo-Martinez et al. 2018). Subsequent weight loss over a particular period, anorexia, and dietary intake can invariably predict a patient’s survival. NRS or SGA is recommended for the child adopted from Tanzania while understanding body composition, biochemical markers of nutrition, physical performance, and muscle function. The collected data and the assessments will then be performed by using a nutritional risk assessment form. The risk assessment form will have various questions regarding the diet and the lifestyle of the patient. Then the collected information from the form will be linked together in order to find out the risk factor responsible for causing the disease in the body of the patient.

Evaluation Technique

After the prediction of the hookworm disease is made by the healthcare practitioner, prescription of medication would be primarily initiated for treating the infection. Combating the effect of hookworm infections would require consuming a diet sufficiently rich in iron by the affected child since heavy amounts of nutritional wastage are induced by diarrhea, blood loss and vomiting, reduced food intake, exasperating anemia, and “protein-energy malnutrition,” along with other dietary disorders. Meals rich in meat, green vegetables, pulses, and fish would help the kid to recuperate from blood and iron losses and compensate for lost nutritional value. Subtle reduction in absorption and digestion, loss of nutrients, chronic inflammation can be cured through anthelmintic medications, used in destroying parasitic worms orally by mouth for up to seven days. The provider can prescribe medicines like Mebendazole and Albendazole to get rid of these parasitic worms (Palmeirim et al. 2018). In addition, the providers can prescribe effective iron supplements for treating anemia. Benzimidazoles are commonly used for treatment. Periodic deworming with Praziquantel would complement safe water, essential sanitization, and hygiene and effectively control morbidity while improving health outcomes. Complementary strategies can include the “Human Hookworm Vaccine initiative for developing the effective vaccine called the Na-ASP- 2 vaccine, for providing a control tool. Process development, cGMP control and manufacture, clinical testing of Na-ASP-2 have been completed for hookworm species (Bogoch et al. 2019). Efforts led by WHO focus on annual, twice, or thrice yearly doses of Praziquantel or BZAs in different schools as the intensity of infection is maximum in children.

Host-stimulated third-stage larvae can secrete metalloprotease belonging to the astacin class called MTP-1 (Abuzeid et al. 2020). The sequencing of mitochondrial genomes conducted for A.duodenale is utilized to investigate genetic diversity and phylogeny to find variations in the genetic population. Genetic heterogeneity within the people makes it challenging to predict anthelmintic resistance development. A well-studied aspect of immune responses to hookworm infection involved the antibody level, crude larval level, adult soluble extracts products, and identification methods ranging from analyzing immune-precipitates in the opening of larval worms. As hookworms engulf the inside plasma host, loss of proteins is evident. Treatment associated with modifications for compensating iron deficiency can improve the child’s health. In areas of high transmission, heavy worm burden-induced loss of protein results in hypoproteinemia, leading to anasarca and edema. Analyzing data derived from the child’s health status evaluates nutritive input substantially. However, the worms cannot cause functional or morphologic alterations in the intestine. Therefore, iron supplementation or fortification would control the adopted child’s disease. The assessment can be evaluated by analysing the validity of the collected data and checking the relationship between the collected data and the presence of iron deficiency as well as hookworm in the Ova of the patient.

References

Abuzeid, A.M., Zhou, X., Huang, Y. and Li, G., 2020. Twenty-five-year research progress in hookworm excretory/secretory products. Parasites & vectors, 13(1), pp.1-18.

Al-Yaman, F., 2017. The Australian Burden of Disease Study: impact and causes of illness and death in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, 2011. Public Health Res Pract, 27(4), p.e2741732.

Bogoch, I.I., Speich, B., Lo, N.C., Moser, W., Croll, D., Ali, S.M., Ame, S.M., Utzinger, J., Andrews, J.R. and Keiser, J., 2019. Clinical evaluation for morbidity associated with soil-transmitted helminth infection in school-age children on Pemba Island, Tanzania. PLoS neglected tropical diseases, 13(7), p.e0007581.

Browne, J., Adams, K., Atkinson, P., Gleeson, D. and Hayes, R., 2017. Food and nutrition programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians: an overview of systematic reviews. Australian Health Review, 42(6), pp.689-697.

Castillo-Martínez, L., Castro-Eguiluz, D., Copca-Mendoza, E.T., Pérez-Camargo, D.A., Reyes-Torres, C.A., Ávila, E.A.D., López-Córdova, G., Fuentes-Hernández, M.R., Cetina-Pérez, L. and del Pilar Milke-García, M., 2018. Nutritional assessment tools for the identification of malnutrition and nutritional risk associated with cancer treatment. Revista de investigacion clinica, 70(3), pp.121-125.

Chapman, P.R., Giacomin, P., Loukas, A. and McCarthy, J.S., 2021. Experimental human hookworm infection: a narrative historical review. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 15(12), p.e0009908.

Clements, A.C. and Alene, K.A., 2021. Global distribution of human hookworm species and differences in their morbidity effects: a systematic review. The Lancet Microbe.

Haigh, M., Burns, J., Potter, C., Elwell, M., Hollows, M., Mundy, J., Taylor, E. and Thompson, S., 2018. Review of cancer among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet.

Loukas, A., Hotez, P.J., Diemert, D., Yazdanbakhsh, M., McCarthy, J.S., Correa-Oliveira, R., Croese, J. and Bethony, J.M., 2016. Hookworm infection. Nature reviews Disease primers, 2(1), pp.1-18.

Morris, N.F., Stewart, S., Riley, M.D. and Maguire, G.P., 2016. The Indigenous Australian Malnutrition Project: The burden and impact of malnutrition in Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander hospital inpatients, and validation of a malnutrition screening tool for use in hospitals—Study rationale and protocol. SpringerPlus, 5(1), pp.1-10.

Palmeirim, M.S., Ame, S.M., Ali, S.M., Hattendorf, J. and Keiser, J., 2018. Efficacy and safety of a single dose versus a multiple dose regimen of mebendazole against hookworm infections in children: a randomised, double-blind trial. EClinicalMedicine, 1, pp.7-13.  Assessment Of Health Status And Burden Of Disease Among Indigenous Australians Essay Paper