Establishment And Application Of Risk Evaluation System On Imported Medical Vectors And Their Related Infectious Diseases For International Navigation Ships

With the acceleration of economic globalization and the prosperity of China’s economy after the opening to the outside world, international trade and personnel exchanges are increasingly frequent. Along with the increase of vehicles, containers and cargoes, the risk of imported diseases is rising. International navigation ships are prone to bringing about imported medical vectors because of its large capacity, complex structure, favorable environment to breed and hide vectors, long sailing time, diversified cargoes and frequently changing stops. In addition, compared with other means of transportation, international navigation ships are more likely to carry imported medical vectors and infectious diseases due to the broader regions and ports involved, a larger amount of cargoes and more open space, which becomes the most critical work of the frontier health quarantine.The Frontier Health Quarantine Department conduct quarantine inspection and sanitary supervision on international navigation ships in accordance with the law according to the requirements of the Frontier Health Quarantine Law of the P.R.C. And the inspection on international navigation ships carrying imported medical vectors is the most important of all.“Operators shall always remain their vehicles clear without infection or pollution sources,including vectors and host; corresponding control measurements shall be taken if infection or pollution sources are found”, stipulated explicitly in the International Health Regulations(2005)(the New Rules),officially implemented in 2007. In recent years, the frequent outbreak of global infectious diseases, such as yellow fever, dengue fever, malaria, West Nile fever and chikungunya put forward a higher demand to the Frontier Health Quarantine6Department.The frontier health quarantine is an effective method to prevent our country from imported medical vectors and mouse transmission diseases. Competent port health authorities shall take the methods that have “scientific basis” and “shall reduce the interference to trade and personnel as far as possible” as required by IHR 2005, which demands the competent port health quarantine to build a corresponding risk evaluation system on imported medical vectors and their related infectious diseases for international navigation ships. At present, the measures taken by the health and quarantine departments of frontier port for the international navigation ships are mainly following the traditional model, which is to choose the quarantine means according to the affected areas. The definition of the infectious diseases is revised in the newly-published regulations. Therefore, it will seem inappropriate if we keep using the original methods with the expanded extensions of the diseases and changing connotation of “the affected-areas”. A set of scientific health and quarantine risk assessment system for the international navigation ships is urgently needed, according to the principle of “the scientific basis”, in order to replace the previous affected-area-centered quarantine means for ships.The research aims to build a health and quarantine risk assessment system for the international navigation ships according to the working nature and needs of the health and quarantine departments of frontier port for the international navigation ships, to further prevent the risks that may bring by the imported vector and the introduction of the infectious diseases.Methods adopted by the research:1.The scientific principles of the Risk management-Principles and guidelines(AS/NZS ISO31000:2009)and the means of the risk assessment in Risk management and the Risk Assessment Technology are applied.2.The practical application-methods of literature analysis, brainstorming, Delphi, risk matrix are applied to facilitate the process of risk-identifying, risk-estimation, risk-assessment and the risk-decision, and the construction of risk-assessment system; the applications of retrospective application research on validation of risk assessment system and computer information technology application risk assessment system.3. The risk-identifying scopes are chosen using the principles of knowing in advance,key-points choosing, the relative objectivity, easy assessments and relative independence.Identifying the risk factors by the means of majority priority, OR value priority, objectivity priority, and brainstorming priority.The research results:1. The effecting factors and weight coefficient of the international navigation ships are determined by asking advice from 17 health and quarantine officers of the seaports from 7directly subordinate inspection and quarantine bureau. The standard for evaluation of the effecting factors is set up to produce a matrix-analysis mathematical model of risk level. Thus,the risk-decision diagram of different risk levels is formed. Eventually, the risk-assessment system of international-navigation ships, imported vector and the introduction of infectious diseases is established.2.After a retrospective analysis of the files of 151 ships from Tianjin Port, Jinzhou Port and Huangpu Port, the results are as follows: ⑴coincidence rates of this risk-assessment system and that of the present experience-centered methods are respectively 85.00%,71.43% and 74.29%.There is little difference in the fitting degrees of the results using the 2 methods. ⑵ the ship’s positive detection rate produced by the risk-assessment system is 9.31%, a slightly higher than the 8% results of the present system.3.As a method of risk-assessment concerning risk-warning and managing among PROSAS and Tianjin health and quarantine information platform, it has realized the predictions for international-navigation ships, imported vector and the introduction of infectious diseases, using the recently build-up risk assessment model.The conclusions of the research:1. The risk-assessment system of international-navigation ships, imported vectors and the introduction of infectious diseases is first established in this research, in which 19 infectious possibilities and 15 factors concerning degree of seriousness are firstly mentioned. It is build upon the acquisitions of basic information of the ship in advance. The results of the risk-assessment can be known by predictions. The measures to be taken are determined by the risk level produced by the assessment, which can offer guidelines for the quarantine results of the international-navigation ships.2. There is little difference in the fitting degrees of the results between the newly-established system and the present one, suggesting its strong suitability for differentports.3. The ship’s positive detection rate produced by the risk-assessment system is a slightly higher than the results of the present system, meaning they are in the same level in the ability of identifying the risks and a better validity.4. The risk-assessment model is built upon the early acquisitions of the structural and objective information, which is suitable for computer-managing system.