For over 100 years, APHA Press has published and updated the “Control of Communicable Diseases Manual,” a trusted reference guide for health and medical professionals.
Eight years after the last print edition, a new volume is now available as an e-book, with a 750-page softbound book coming this summer.
The 21st edition includes new chapters on Zika, dengue, vector control and SARS-COV-2. Updated chapters cover MERS and SARS, anthrax, yellow fever, West Nile virus, one health, staphylococcal diseases and more. Some chapters have been restructured.
“It brings together all the current understanding and the way forward,” David Heymann, MD, DTM&H, editor of the 21st edition, told The Nation’s Health.
An advantage to the e-book is that chapters are continuously updated. CCDM users can expect further updates on SARS-COV-2 as COVID-19 “becomes a control program rather than a pandemic response program,” said Heymann, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Heymann has also held positions at the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
CCDM is intended for health professionals working in global health, infectious disease, epidemiology, travel medicine and tropical medicine.
The manual covers over 100 infectious diseases, from actinomycosis to Zika, with other chapters expanding on or addressing general themes. An editorial advisory board chooses the experts who write and update the chapters.
Some of the updates and new chapters in CCDM are related to the impact climate change is having on communicable diseases.
A chapter on vector control was added to the online edition in February, detailing emerging vector-control methods, personal protective technology and environment management. Rising global temperatures are expanding warm seasons and allowing ticks, mosquitoes, flies and other bugs to expand their habitats, driving up cases of disease. Housing developments are also pushing further into wild landscapes, placing human habitats into places where vectors live.
“The chapter gives the general principles of how to really control vectors,” Heymann said. “This is more and more important as populations increase and environmental degradation occurs.”
A chapter updated last spring explores the growing risk of infectious diseases jumping from animals to humans, which experts say likely happened with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. About 70% of human diseases emerging in the last 40 years originated from animals, according to CDC.
Companion volumes to CCDM, “Control of Communicable Diseases: Clinical Practice” and “Control of Communicable Diseases: Laboratory Practice,” are also available through APHA Press.
To pre-order CCDM, subscribe to the e-book or purchase a companion book, visit www.aphabookstore.org.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
