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Prepared for the Workshop on Training in Research Methodology held at the Faculty of Medicine King Fahad Medical City Riyadh Saudi Arabia 18th May 2010 by Dr Omar Hasan Kasule Sr MB ChB (MUK), MPH (Harvard), DrPH (Harvard) Professor of Epidemiology and Bioethics
PROBLEM #1.
The Ministry of Health has approached you for advice on what to do about a new disease entity whose exact definition and causes are unknown so far. It started in one of the international schools on the first day of school with 2 children running high fever, coughing, and diarrhea. By the end of the week 30 children in the school had been excused from attending school. By the end of the month more than 1000 similar cases has been identified in many schools in the capital and the problem was spreading outside the capital.
PROBLEM #2:
The Ministry of Health has invited you to attend a presentation by a foreign company of an infra-red thermal device for detecting respiratory infection among passengers arriving at the airport. The device is in the form of a camera that is targeted at each passenger as he/she passes the health control post. You are required to investigate the effectiveness and usefulness of the device.
PROBLEM #3
The Ministry of Health has asked you for advice regarding licensing a new vaccine against cervical HPV infection recently produced by a transnational pharmaceutical company that is interested in marketing it in Malaysia
PROBLEM #4
The Ministry of Health in cooperation with the Ministry of Education has approved a 5-year SAR2.0 million nutritional supplementation project for primary school children in fishing villages along the East Coast. However there is no epidemiological information on the matter.
PROBLEM #5
There has been a recent spate of heart attack cases in the country and newspapers have started writing about an epidemic and the need to open cardiac centers in each district. Several individuals and organizations have also called for mass screening of the population to discover risk factors or symptoms of coronary heart disease early in order to start early treatment. The Ministry of Health wants to make policy decisions to address these problems and they have approached you for advice. You check in reports available at the Ministry and medical journals for information on the prevalence of coronary heart disease but found nothing. You then decide to collect the necessary data yourself.
PROBLEM #6
In the past 2 weeks, 10 citizens have been afflicted by a mysterious illness that starts as a common cold but develops into a severe cough, pneumonia, and sudden death. Nothing is known about the nature of the disease or its causes. The cases of the disease have been found all over the country and both genders are affected. Some of the victims are children while others are adults. The victims do not seem to have been in direct contact with one another. There is general fear in the country and the newspapers are calling on the Ministry of Health to take quick action. A policy meeting held at the Ministry of Health could not reach any conclusions because nothing is known about the disease. The meeting assigned you the task of finding out events or socio-demographic factors associated with the disease. You decide to use a case control design.
PROBLEM #7
The Ministry of Health has received complaints that schools in urban areas get better school health services making their children healthier than those of rural schools. The Minister has asked you to investigate this matter and to propose a policy to address the problem. You decide to study the height, weight, and completion of vaccination as indicators of health status.
PROBLEM #8
Statistics at the Center for Disease Control in the Ministry of Health have shown that an increase in cases of dysentery (bloody diarrhea) in the past 6 months in a sea-side village. Newspapers have been speculating that the cause is a new type of fish imported from a neighboring country. The Director of the Center for Disease Control has asked you to investigate the matter and report to him.
PROBLEM #9
The Ministry of Health is concerned about complaints from the public about absenteeism of paramedical workers. The Minister has asked you to investigate the matter. You go to the main hospital and obtain the records of staff in 3 departments: dietetics, physiotherapy, and radiology. You decide to investigate (a) the relation between absence and illness and (b) the relation between days of absence and salary.
PROBLEM #10
A pharmaceutical manufacturer has applied for a license from the Ministry of Health to start marketing a new anti-influenza vaccine for the elderly in Brunei