Official information about an outbreak of pneumonia of unknown etiology in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, first appeared on December 31, 2019, from the WHO center in China. On February 11, 2020, the new coronavirus infection, which became an emergency posing a threat to national and international security, was named COVID-2019 (COrona VIrus Disease 2019), and the virus causing it was renamed SARS-CoV-2.
In the spring of 2022, the largest outbreak of the monkeypox virus occurred in so-called developed countries; it was first identified in 1958 during an outbreak in colonies of cynomolgus monkeys of Singaporean origin in Copenhagen. According to a WHO statement, from May 13, 2022, to June 2, 2022, the organization received information about "780 laboratory-confirmed cases of monkeypox from 27 member states in four WHO regions."
On April 28, 2022, the Ministry of Justice of Russia registered a decree of the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of the Russian Federation "On additional measures for the prevention of cholera in the Russian Federation," of which, according to WHO data, about 300,000 cases and up to 30,000 deaths are registered annually worldwide.
We know that HSE is a system for preserving the life and health of workers during their labor activities, which includes legal, socio-economic, organizational, technical, sanitary-hygienic, therapeutic-prophylactic, rehabilitative, and other measures. Also, according to sanitary legislation, every employer bears the responsibility for the timely prevention of the occurrence and spread of infectious diseases and mass non-infectious diseases (poisonings), etc.
The emergence of COVID-2019 became a challenge not only for medical workers and categories of personnel involved in ensuring the uninterrupted operation of vital spheres of citizens' existence, but also for HSE specialists, who, in the eyes of their employers heading enterprises in various sectors of the economy, were to become the guarantors of ensuring the epidemiological safety of the enterprise's employees.
Due to the developing unfavorable epidemiological situation both globally and in the Russian Federation, the increased number of administrative cases against employers due to the lack of proper sanitary and anti-epidemic (preventive) measures at enterprises, and the prevailing absence of medical workers (not to mention medical offices and sanitary posts) at enterprises (with the exception of enterprises that have the capacity to maintain both medical workers and entire medical services on staff), the responsibility for organizing and implementing the aforementioned areas and measures falls on HSE specialists.
A large number of regulatory legal acts in the field of ensuring the sanitary and epidemiological well-being of the population have been developed in the Russian Federation. Thus, according to some of them, an action plan for the prevention of infections is approved and implemented at the enterprise; antiseptic dispensers are placed in high-traffic areas; health monitoring of employees with thermometry is organized; employees are provided with disinfectants, protective masks, and gloves; sanitary treatment of common areas with disinfectants and closed-type air recirculators is carried out, and so on.
Summing up the above, in my opinion, the most important task for training both future HSE specialists in bachelor's and master's programs, as well as for the periodic professional development of current certified HSE specialists, is training in the field of epidemiology using modern technologies, forms, and methods in such areas as virology, immunology; general and specific epidemiology; infections and infectious diseases, and so on. It is time to recognize that due to the unfavorable epidemiological situation in the world and the absence of specialized professionals at every enterprise and organization whose labor activity would be related to the health protection of employees, the main role must and will be played by the HSE specialist, on whose level of professional competence depends not only the effectiveness of HSE management in organizations but also the social protection of workers.