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● An Acute disease does not cause major ● A Chronic disease will cause major effects
effects on general health on general health(Loss of weight, feeling
tired all the time, being short of breath)
● A chronic disease may affect a person for
● An acute disease may affect a person for
years
a few days or weeks
● A Chronic disease will cause drastic long
● An acute disease will not cause drastic
term affects on the health of a person.
long term affects on the health of a
person. (Prolonged general poor health)
Causes of Diseases
(These are just examples and are not to be generalized for every disease.)
Microbes can spread in the community and infect Cannot infect others
others
Other Examples:
Staphylococci, a bacteria causes acne on skin
Trypanosoma, a protozoan causes Sleeping Sickness.
Leishmania, a protozoan causes Kala-azar.
Controlling the Infectious Agents:
•Closely related groups have similar life processes.
•Therefore , drugs that block one of these life processes in one member of the group is likely to be
effective against other members of the group.
•However , the same drug may not work against a microbe belonging to a different group.
What are Antibiotics?
Antibiotics (Greek anti, “against”; bios, “life”) are chemical compounds used to kill or inhibit
the growth of infectious organisms.
•Commonly block biochemical pathways important for the growth of bacteria.
•Example- An antibiotic – Penicillin blocks the bacterial processes that build cell wall. If human beings
take Penicillin, it will not effect humans as human cells do not have cell walls.
•therefore antibiotics will control a number of bacterial infections.
•Antibiotics do not work against viral infections as viruses do not have the same biochemical
processes as bacteria.
•That is why an antibiotic does not control viral infections like common cold.
Spread of Infectious Diseases/How they can be communicated?
Since the infectious agents(microbes can move from an affected person to a healthy person,
therefore these diseases are also called Communicable Diseases.
Medium for spread of the Process of spread of the Names of Diseases that can
disease disease be spread this way
How does the AIDS virus spread from a healthy person to a diseased person?
1.Sexual Contact, 2. Blood to Blood contact with infected people, 3. Infected mother to her baby during
pregnancy, 4. Infected mother to her baby through breast feeding.
Why do the female mosquitoes of a species, suck blood from warm blooded animals like human
beings?
Because the female mosquitoes need highly nutritious food in the form of blood, in order to lay mature eggs.
Manifestation of the Disease(In what ways does the disease affects a person)
How does the Organ/ tissue likely to Symptoms of the Disease Examples of Diseases
microbe enter the be targeted by the
body microorganism
Limitations to Principles of treatment for infectious diseases: 1) The body functions may be
damaged due to the disease and the patient may never recover completely. 2) Treatment takes time
and may cast a lot of money. 3) the infection may spread to other people.
THAT IS WHY PREVENTION OF DISEASES IS BETTER THAN THEIR CURE
Principles of Prevention
Two types of methods: a) General Methods
b) Methods Specific to a disease
Water Borne By providing safe drinking water, treating water to kill microbial
contamination
Vector Borne Clean environment that does not allows mosquitoes to breed-
Public Hygiene
Specific Methods of prevention-are disease specific
Immunization ie Vaccination by which we can fool the immune system into developing
antibodies against a disease. By this method the body builds up ‘strength’ to fight against a
disease.
Questions:
1) Why is it difficult to make antiviral medicines?
2) What is HIV-AIDS? How does this disease spread from one person to another? List the symptoms
of this
disease. What are its general effects? How does a person suffering from AIDS die?
3) How was small pox eradicated?
4) Why are children living in many parts of India usually immune to Hepatitis –A?
5) Name five disease against which vaccines are available.
6) Comment on the following statement: ‘ Having a disease means preventing subsequent attacks of
the same”
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