Tag: infectious diseases - transmission and prevention

• House flies are not the neatest of insects. They visit such places as dumps, sewers, and garbage heaps. They feed on faecal matter, discharges from wounds and sores, sputum, and all sorts of moist decaying matter such as spoiled fish, eggs and meat. House flies are strongly suspected of transmitting at least 65 diseases to humans, including typhoid fever, dysentery, cholera, gangrene, poliomyelitis, yaws, anthrax, tularemia, leprosy and tuberculosis. Flies regurgitate and excrete wherever they come to rest and thereby mechanically transmit disease organisms.
• Pertussis, also known as whooping cough, is a highly contagious respiratory disease. It is caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis. Pertussis is known for uncontrollable, violent coughing which often makes it hard to breathe.
• Pertussis, also known as whooping cough, is a highly contagious respiratory disease. It is caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis. Pertussis is known for uncontrollable, violent coughing which often makes it hard to breathe.

The common cold is an infectious disease caused by rhinovirus. It causes inflammation of upper respiratory tract.

• Wuchereria bancrofti is commonly called the Filarial worm as it causes Filariasis or Elephantiasis in humans. It lives in the lymph vessels of man and female Culex mosquito is its secondary host and acts as a vector. Yellow fever (YF) is an African mosquito-borne infection of primates. It is caused by a virus of the Flavivirus genus of the Flaviviridae family. In its natural habitat, it is transmitted between monkeys by forest-dwelling primatophilic Aedes mosquitoes.
• Aedes mosquitoes cause yellow fever and filarial worm cause Filariasis. 
•  Malaria, caused by Female Anopheles mosquitoes pick up the parasites by feeding on infected humans. The parasites develop in a mosquito’s body for 10 to 18 days, then is passed on when the mosquito injects saliva while feeding.
• The Oriental Rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis), also known as the tropical rat flea, is a parasite of rodents, primarily of the genus Rattus, and is a primary vector for bubonic plague and murine typhus. This occurs when the flea has fed on an infected rodent, and then bites a human. Diarrhoea is when your bowel movements become loose or watery. The definition of diarrhoea is passing loose or watery bowel movements 3 or more times in a day (or more frequently than usual). Diarrhoea occurs when the lining of the intestine is unable to absorb fluid, or it actively secretes fluid. 
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An airborne disease is any disease that is caused by pathogens and transmitted through the air. all respiratory droplets. The airborne transmission that occurs utilizes small particles or droplet nuclei that contains these infectious agents or pathogens. These particles and droplets are capable of remaining suspended in air for extended periods of time. Inhalation of these particles results in respiratory tract infection. Whooping cough (Bordetella pertussis), meningitis (Neisseria species), diphtheria (Corynebacterium diphtheriae), pneumonia (Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Streptococcus species) and tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) are some of the bacterial diseases that spread through air. 

Cholera is caused by a bacterium called Vibrio cholerae. A person gets cholera by drinking water or eating food infected with the bacterium. Once swallowed, it settles in the lining of the small bowel and releases a toxin (poison) that can cause the body to flush liquid into the small bowel, resulting in watery diarrhoea. Typhoid fever is an acute illness associated with fever caused by the Salmonella typhi bacteria. The bacteria spread through contaminated food or water and occasionally through direct contact with someone who is infected. 

City dwellers are facing the acute problems of water and vector borne diseases due to water logging and improper solid waste management and sanitation. The water logging and reprehensible drainage, contamination of water of upper layer from which major portion of the people get the polluted water through shallow bored hand pumps for drinking and other domestic purposes, are main cause of water borne diseases in the city. It is evident from studies that about 70.5 % population is suffering from the abdomen diseases cause by using polluted and contaminated water. Japanese encephalitis, jaundice, cholera, colitis, diarrhoea, dysentery, typhoid and skin diseases are common.