COM3278 Deliverable 7 – The Cost of a High-Risk Disease Outbreak Presentation Latest 2023

COM3278

Deliverable 7 – The Cost of a High-Risk Disease Outbreak Presentation

Assignment Content

Create a presentation on the cost of an outbreak of a high-risk disease.

Competencies

Summarize the issues that have been encountered in developing a global lingua franca.

Illustrate how markup languages can be used as a lingua franca.

Illustrate how programming languages can be used as a lingua franca.

Contrast computer and markup languages with human languages as a lingua franca.

Analyze the value of computer coding and markup languages as a replacement for foreign language requirements.

Evaluate the impact of critical thinking, communication, and diversity in the creation and use of coding as a language

Student Success Criteria

View the grading rubric for this deliverable by selecting the “This item is graded with a rubric” link, which is located in the Details & Information pane.

Introduction — Pandemic!

A new and extremely deadly Ebola-like hemorrhagic virus has been discovered along the Chari River in The Republic of Chad, Africa, infecting volunteers for Médecins Sans Frontières before anyone knew how serious the infection was. Unfortunately, infected team members traveled from N’Djamena’s International Airport to other African cities, including Cairo, Addis Ababa, Casablanca, and Khartoum, as well as Paris, where the disease was finally isolated. Like Ebola, the Chari virus is only spread through contact with bodily fluids, so it was easy to isolate in France, but the African continent is altogether a different story.

By the time the WHO (World Health Organization) could react, the disease had already spread to Algeria, Zanzibar, and South Africa. It is the pandemic the WHO Director-General has feared for months.

The WHO not only has to coordinate medical centers across the entire continent, but integrate the disease control team and local authorities to find and isolate populations infected with the Chari virus as well as improving the reporting of possible breaches and new infections.

Because of the virulence of the disease, warnings and restrictions must also be quickly and easily communicated and obvious to international travelers caught in the infectious areas from Egypt and Morocco on the north of Africa, to South Africa on the south end of the continent.

The WHO needs to communicate prevention and treatment techniques efficiently and swiftly with local clinics across the entire African continent in areas where the official UN languages (English, Arabic, French, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese) have proven only partly successful, if at all.

The Executive Board of the World Health Assembly, which oversees the policies of the WHO, has finally agreed with the Director-General that some more universal form of communication—a lingua franca—be developed to enable communication with hundreds of different communities to slow (and stop) the spread of the disease.

Scenario

The Director-General of the WHO has ultimate confidence in your knowledge and experience as the Eastern Hemisphere Communications Director for the Infectious Disease Task Force (IDTF), and has asked you to take point in proposing the solution to this communication nightmare.

She knows that you will have to consider general communication between different cultures and languages, but also provide for more technical communication among diverse and multilingual medical staff across the continent, as well as between any individual doctor and patient. Even rapidly drafted local medical assistants will need to understand how to properly put on Personal Protective Equipment—specialized clothing to provide protection against infectious materials.

“Chari virus is ‘laughing’ at us,” the Director-General wrote you in an email. “It’s defying us to communicate fast enough and well enough to manage infections and explain preventative measures before it engulfs the entire continent.”

What she wants you to prepare, as fast as possible, is a best-case scenario for communicating across cultures. She knows there is no one-size-fits-all solution… certainly not under these crisis conditions… nor instant fixes, but the WHO needs something organized and useful—and quickly—for medical personnel to teach and treat the epidemic, from major population centers to isolated villages.

You are aware of the history and uses of lingua francas, and you have investigated constructed languages; you have learned what markup and programming languages can and cannot do; and you have key knowledge about symbolic languages.

The Chari virus has spread to areas that speak Afroasiatic, Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Congo, Bantu, and Indo-European languages. Many radio and television stations broadcast in multiple languages (the BBC Worldwide Service, for example, broadcasts in over a dozen languages in Africa, including English, French, Arabic, Berber, Hausa, Somali, Swahili, and Nigerian Pidgin), but remote communities may not have radio reception or Internet access.

Each of these smaller communities is just as important to the WHO as the larger cities. And neither broadcast nor Web services are sufficient for training aid workers, explaining prevention in rural areas (including safe funeral and burial rites), and providing treatment information. The Director-General believes that most of the communication during the initial critical period will be verbal, but also expects signage to be necessary at medical centers and for communicating with isolated villages.

Instructions

The Director-General needs a SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of your best plan to communicate quickly and effectively in all of the affected areas. A SWOT analysis, you are aware, defines the project objective and determines the advantages and disadvantages of the plan, as well as elements that might affect the plan either positively or negatively. The Director-General needs to be able to explain the plan to the Board and wants you to provide:

How the WHO should communicate across multiple cultures and languages both quickly and efficiently in order to best respond to this infectious disease crisis

Strengths and Weaknesses – human and physical resources of the WHO and any other current internal systems or processes you think might help or hinder your plan (you can let her take care of the financials, so do not worry about costs)

Opportunities and Threats — demographics (particularly the multiple cultures that need to be supported), physical environment, and local or national resources

Topics you are expected to cover in the SWOT analysis are:

Proposed Communication Methodology

Explain the communication method the WHO should use to respond to this crisis. (Could computer coding, markup languages, or symbolic languages be used in place of human languages?)

Describe how this method will be implemented, and how will it improve training and prevention communication better than the current plethora of lingua francas, especially in situations where there are no bridge languages.

Create a 4-square summary table with titles and 3-5 bullet points of Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats. Expand on the bullet points in paragraph format in subsequent labeled sections for each part of the SWOT.

Strengths & Weakness (internal factors)

Describe what resources (financial, human, or physical) will be needed to implement the method.

Contrast the advantages of the communication method you chose and the disadvantages of the others (include existing lingua francas, computer and markup languages, human languages, and symbolic languages).

Delineate the problems you foresee in the implementation of your method – Technical? Social? Cultural? Training? Support? Difficulty? Time?

Opportunities & Threats (external factors)

List any restrictions or issues with local or national health care infrastructure, or local cultures that this method might encounter.

Identify how the method might be expanded beyond the initial implementation; especially should the outbreak spread beyond the African continent.

When researching opportunities and threats, you only need to explore the cities/countries affected by the Primary and Secondary transmission zones, as shown on the map. Consider all six (6) of the primary transmission cities (endangered by infected travelers) and at least six (6) different cities that are secondary transmission sites.

Be sure the analysis has correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation with minimal or no errors. Include a Reference page in APA format as the last page of the analysis.