Public Health responsibility for deaths

The following statement from Dominick's post raises an entirely
different question---probably only tangentially related to WNV.

" In my neighboring county, Nassau, there may be lawsuits filed over the
2 WNV
deaths there. While I do not care to comment on the merits of those
cases,
they provide evidence that those families do not consider the deaths of
elders acceptable, and that they want accountability from the public
health
community. "

I can guess about the comment he doesn't wish to make. But the counter
question for public health to grapple with is whether there were more
deaths that could have been prevented among the elderly (or any group)
if the same amount of public health attention (and media attention) had
been devoted to tackling other illnesses. That won't assuage the two
families with WEST NILE victims. But during that time period many other
people of all ages died----mostly of causes that could have been
prevented or at least delayed.

M. Gochfeld
>
Received on Tue Jan 15 11:44:00 2002