Valentini, V; Altamirano, H; Summerfield, A; Williams, P; (2017) Assessment of the risk of tuberculosis transmission for five housing prototypes designed for a Haitian community. In: Proceedings of the ISIAQ The International Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate , Healthy Buildings 2012. International Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate: Brisbane, QLD, Australia.

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Abstract

The hospitalization of patients affected with tuberculosis (TB) can be particularly long and burdensome, especially in poor countries where the disease remains a major issue and beds in health care centres are a precious resource. Therefore a policy of decentralising TB treatment from hospitals to residential environments is starting to be considered worldwide, and new guidelines in support of such strategy are needed. This study illustrates a potential “risk assessment model” for TB transmission in dwellings that might help analysing both existing building stocks and new designs in order to apply the new policy, utilizing as a reference the general frame of risk assessment for buildings developed by civil engineering; the model was then tested on five housing prototypes proposed for the town of Saint Marc, Haiti, showing that environmental features of a building such as ventilation, crowding, temperature and relative humidity are among the most important parameters for the estimate of the risk. The final outcome of the analysis, however, highlighted how he most influential factor on the risk of spread of infectious diseases is the efficiency of the health care system operating in the building urban context.

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