Comparison Of Provision Against Contagious Diseases In The Nineteenth And Twenty-First Centuries

Background information

Compare and contrast provision against contagious diseases in the nineteenth and twenty first centuries?

Contagious disease is described as infections which could be transferred from one person to another by direct contact. Contagious disease are still considered to be the major killing agents in the world and the situation has worsened with tuberculosis, malaria, HIV and now recently Ebola taking a huge toll on mankind.

These are more apparent in developing world where the sheer survival in early childhood is again a major challenge to the question of survivability as acute respiratory diseases and diarrhoea accounting for close to six million young lives every year.

While individuals falling sick require the medical expertise to survive the odd against these communicable diseases, it’s the assessment of cause and controlling measures that will help the community to fight against these diseases effectively.

Any contagious disease could either be epidemic or endemic. The epidemic forms usually are seasonal and most of the time any new form of contagious diseases are epidemic, whereas endemic forms are generally restricted to any geographical forms.

The learning process of disease is a long complicated time consuming method where any new epidemic needs to be understood from its category, vectors involved and incubation period. The disease unless understood from factors cannot be controlled from spreading, and then eradicated properly (Ludwig, 2005)..

Epidemiology is concerned with the community science where the common characteristics of a disease is compared with other relative ones and analysed. With every passing day the same bacteria’s and virus that could be killed or restrained with antibiotics are now getting stronger and stronger by mutating. The same virulent now could survive in multiple hosts and that makes the task even more complicated for mankind to survive in this ever changing scenario.

Various factors both natural and artificial have influenced the manner in which these diseases have spread and became potent killers even in modern times. The nutrition pattern, diet, the general hygiene conditions, the health systems and overall medical advances along with perceptions have all contributed to both spreading and restricting into new segments of society.

During the colonial period most of the causes of death were basically the infectious diseases and if there was any change in the rate of mortality it was only because

• The mode of transmission
  
  
• Immunity to disease
  
  
• Other methods were of course treatment of disease

The main aim of learning about contagious disease is to prevent transmission and reduce the level of infection.

The precautionary measures one has to undertake are flu vaccination, pre departure TB test and followed by re test after 12 weeks.

The mode of transmission is another vital bit of information which is essential to reduce and finally stop the spreading of disease.

Proper quarantine methods are also essential to eradicate the contagious disease from a geographical area or community.

The spreading and infection depended completely on how these bacteria’s and virus survived in a particular weather pattern along with how well the spreading is restricted.

• The low death rates in New England were due to quarantine measures and laws which generally reduced the spread of the disease (Bashford, 2006).
  
  
• The higher death rates in south were mainly due to suitable weather patterns for these microbes to survive apart from no or minimal quarantine measures.

Density of population, sanitation, nutritional intake all combine together how good a epidemic could be contained.

Aim of learning about contagious disease

These increase in infectious diseases affected negatively the children and their nutritional status.

• The nutritional deficiency resulted in deficit growth and development.
  
  
• Reduction in average weight and height of children
  
  
• Class difference resulted in difference in growth pattern as well
  
  
• Infection and contagious disease also resulted in higher casualty during war

The wide spread use of antibiotics have made the medicines ineffective against the new strains of microbes. Humankind have become susceptible to new variants of disease which are either spread through animals, birds, body fluids, apart from the normal route of direct contact.

Non availability of drugs, resistance to drugs, new entrants of vectors and wide spread use of medicines have led to a situation of emergency in many countries to fight against super bugs.

Contagious disease is here to stay and the mutating microbes could become the greatest  risk factor for the survival of the entire human kind.

The term vaccine is basically a Latin word derivation which means cow prevented a disease. As vacca means cow and as cowpox prevented the spread of small pox (Ludwig, 2005).

The vaccine era began in  1774 when Benjamin Jesty showed the immunity to small pox. This person had cowpox and later on inocoluted his wife and sons. Almost 22 years later Edward Jenner published his work and mouse pox virus replaced cowpox in the vacine.

It was noticed that the vaccine lost its potency when it went through serial human testing and the virus mutated when it passed from human to another and was no longer immunogenic.

Conclusion:

Use of vaccine in limited amount of drugs against microbes in controlled manner can control and reduce the threat to humankind. The advent of over usage and uncontrolled use of drugs caused mutations of these microbes and hence has led to a situation where people are more susceptible to disease (Easterlin, 2009).

The change in life style, food intake and living conditions have increased the threat level of microbe invasion even more than what it was in early 19^th century. The strains are more powerful and immune to drugs. The advent of super bug has now taken the challenge of microbe led war against humankind to a new level.

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