Prevention of any kind of disease requires early detection of the causative agents of the disease through thorough screening. In screening for the causative agent, the screening test should be highly sensitive and specific to pick up the truly positive cases, that is those that really have the pathogen causing the disease and leave out the true negatives, that is those cases which really don’t have the causative agent. A test that picks up false positive as well as false negatives can be disastrous depending on the kind of disease the test is designed to detect.
In designing intervention measures to screen and prevent type 1 diabetes, Doctor LaPorte et al (1997) insisted on understanding the socio-demographic characteristics of the population to be screened and more so the early symptoms of the disease, the right time to intervene as well as the duration which the intervention is going to take. LaPorte (1997) highlighted prevention of diseases as the backbone in matters of public health.
This should be done through creating awareness of the disease by educating people, promoting proper sanitation and diet and ensuring proper management and treatment (Becker et al, 2000). Screening of chronic diseases, such as cancer is advocated for by many medical practioners (Fields & Chevlen, 2006). This can be done routinely like pap’s smears and palpating in women for early detection of the disease and this prevents the chance of the disease advancing hence curable. Early diagnosis of ovarian cancer in it self does lower the fatality rate (Fields & Chevlen, 2006).
However observe early diagnosis is difficult to achieve since the available tests for screening ovarian cancer are not as highly sensitive and specific as they should be hence there’s a high likelihood of recording false positives and false negative. In screening for genetic material that predestines an individual to breast or prostrate cancer, it prepares an individual for early detection and prevention of the disease developing in future (Kadouri, Hubert & Rotenberg, 2007).
The disease can therefore be arrested early in age, however mis-diagnosis in this case giving false positive will make the subject be exposed to chemotherapy, and most of the cancerous drugs have terrible side effects (Kadouri, Hubert & Rotenberg, 2007). Mandatory HIV screening helps patients to enroll on anti-retroviral therapy in which case ensures long survival periods, it is also helpful in preventing mother to child infection, however making it mandatory goes against bioethics (Maheswaran & Bland, 2009).
Checking the BMI of school going children does ensures that children likely to develop obesity are detected early in life and are put on diet that could prevent them from being obese and developing diseases associated with obesity. The only undoing with this screening is the stigma which an obese child is left with hence requires a lot of counseling (Sorof & Daniels, 2002). References Becker, D. , LaPorte, R. , Libman, I. , Pietropaolo, M. , & Dosch, H. (2002). Prevention of Type 1 Diabetes. Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 85(2), 498-506. Fields, M. , & Chevlen, E. (2006). Ovarian cancer screening.
Clinical Journal Oncology. 10(1), 77-81. Kadouri, L. , Hubert, A. , & Rotenberg, Y. (2007) Cancer risks in carriers of the BRCA1/2 Ashkenazi founder mutations. Medical Genetics, 44(7), 467–471. LaPorte, R. (1997). Improving public health through information superhighway. Retrieved May 19, 2010 from http://www. emro. who. int/Publications/emhj/0901_2/Supercourse. pdf Maheswaran, H. & Bland, R. M. (2009). Preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV in resource-limited settings’, Future Virology. 4(2), 165-175. Sorof, J. & Daniels, S. (2002) Obesity Hypertension in Children. Hypertension, 40, 441.