Risk Management/Health

This learning resource about Risk Management in the Health sector starts with an application. The analysis of this application introduces to further exploration of the topic.

Cyanobacterial Toxins and Health Risk Management
Toxins generated by cyanobacteria may imply health wirk if they occur in mass populations. In general the exponential growth of bacteria under favorable condition could lead to the fact, that even minor irrelevant concentrations produced by a small colony of bacteria could increase towards health relevant concentration of toxins due to exponential growth and aggregation of the toxins.

Key questions for the risk management are:
 * (Occurance) Where do mas population of cyanobacteria with health relevants toxins occur? (see spatial representation of risk),
 * (Ecology) What is the relationship between cyanobacteria, other icroorganisms and their interaction with environment? Especially determine environmental conditions that trigger the mass population of bacteria.
 * (Detection) How can public health agencies detect mass populations and warn population in affected regions if necessary? to Detection, Toxicology and Health Effects Assessment.
 * (Toxicology and Health Care) What are the adverse effects of the toxicants on living organisms and how can medical staff member can diagnose and treat exposures to toxicants, that generated by mass populations of cyanobacteria. Especially relationship between dose and its effects on the exposed organism is very important in toxicology, even if mixture toxicants with an acceptable dose could lead to higher or lower influence chemical toxicity that estimated by a separate the consideration of dose–response relationship.

Learning Task

 * Explore the systemic link of Antimicrobial Resistance and use of antimicrobials in
 * medicine,
 * agriculture and aquaculture.
 * It is obvious that health care facilities services that the use of antimicrobial medicines is necessary, to treat infections (see antimicrobial chemotherapy) and the use of antimicrobial medicines prevents patients and population from being infected (see antimicrobial prophylaxis).


 * Analyse toxic algal blooms and red tides from a global perspective! Start with Anderson, D. M. (1989) and check current literature on that topic? Analyse the consequence for regional or local fisherman and fishing industry in general.
 * Compare drivers for minimizing animal losses and treatment costs in animal food production with negative side-effects on antimicrobial resitance. Find scientific evidence and make you own recommendation for decision-makers that includes both economic requirements and health risk management.