The main directions of non-specific prevention of infectious diseases

Abstract

Infectious pathology continues to occupy one of the leading places in the structure of causes of death worldwide and in developing countries prevails over somatic. The most cost-effective way to prevent infectious diseases is vaccination. However, the use of vaccines cannot be implemented to combat all known infectious diseases, given their massive nature and often occurring polyetiology. In this regard, non-specific prevention is of particular relevance. In order to systematize and generalize the data of the scientific literature on methods and means of non-specific prevention, as well as to assess their effectiveness, a search for literary sources using electronic bibliographic resources was carried out https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ and https://elibrary.ru/ according to the keywords «non-specific prevention», «prevention of infections». The analysis of scientific works made it possible to evaluate non-specific prevention from the standpoint of classical epidemiology and the population approach to the organization of epidemiological studies and planning of preventive measures. The measures aimed at the source of infection, the mechanism of transmission and the susceptible organism in relation to different groups of infection are considered. Priority preventive and anti-epidemic measures were identified in relation to infections with aerosol, fecal-oral, contact and transmissible transmission mechanisms, and their effectiveness was evaluated. Special attention is paid to measures for the prevention of zoonotic and natural focal infections, as well as measures for the sanitary protection of the territory of the state from the import and spread of infectious diseases. The applicability of non-specific prevention of infectious morbidity in the conditions of the emergence of new biological threats is considered on the example of a new coronavirus infection COVID-19. It is established that the scientifically based tactics and methodology of non-specific prevention of infectious diseases are the property of domestic and world epidemiology, and its effectiveness has been tested by time and does not lose relevance today. The risk of new threats indicates that the improvement of this approach is a promising direction for the prevention of infectious diseases.