What are the Strategies for the Prevention and Control of Diseases for Good Health?
The strategies for preventing and controlling diseases are vaccination against disease, quarantine of infected people or animals, and personal hygiene to avoid contamination.
Prevention is a much better strategy than control. It is much cheaper and provides a permanent solution to the problem. Management involves interrupting or slowing disease transmission by reducing the number of vectors, infected hosts, and susceptible hosts.
Power can be achieved through population management (such as destroying insect vector populations), public health measures (like using bed nets or sprays), prevention of high-risk groups, vaccination, education campaigns, and promoting personal hygiene.
In some cases, nature plays a role in controlling the spread of this deadly disease —malaria-carrying mosquitoes are killed off during the winter due to cold weather.
What is the Vector of a Disease?
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A vector is any living intermediary that carries a parasite from an infected host to a new, susceptible host. Mosquitos are vectors for Malaria and dengue fever. Bed bugs can be vectors for allergies and even plague. Ticks can be vectors for Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Birds have been implicated in the spread of avian flu from continent to continent.
How do Mosquitoes Transmit Diseases?
Mosquitoes pick up pathogens by feeding on animals that carry them, such as birds or monkeys, with Plasmodium parasites that cause Malaria or filarial worms responsible for elephantiasis and river blindness.
Those parasites multiply within the mosquito’s body, though not enough to make it sick. The parasites move from a mosquito’s gut to its salivary glands, making the insect infectious as it bites.
What is a Vector-Borne Disease?
Certain insects transmit vector-borne diseases, including mosquitoes, ticks, and sandflies. In contrast to airborne illnesses such as measles, vector-borne diseases are usually contracted by being bitten by an infected insect or animal.
How do you Prevent Malaria?
Malaria prevention involves avoiding infection by protecting yourself from mosquito bites by wearing long sleeves, pants, and repellants on exposed skin. Also, avoid going out at night time when mosquitoes are more prevalent. Anti-malarial drugs can be prescribed for those traveling or living in areas where Malaria is prevalent.
What is Prophylactic?
Prophylactic measures are measures taken to prevent or limit the extent of an infection, disease, or other unwanted health condition. They can also refer to a drug used for this type of prevention.
Mosquito netting and insect repellant are common prophylactics against mosquito bites and Malaria. Vaccines work as prophylactics by pre-treating subjects to prevent the actual disease from developing later on in life when exposed to similar pathogens.
Vaccines do not always prevent people from contracting diseases, despite their name, but they boost immunity. If employed, this boost in immunity decreases the incidence and severity of infection.
How Does a Vaccine Work?
A vaccine stimulates the body’s immune system to recognize an organism (bacteria or virus) that causes disease. If exposed to this organism later in life, the immune response is usually effective at destroying it quickly before any symptoms develop. However, exposure sometimes produces no noticeable effect because the vaccinated individual already has immunity from a previous infection.
Vaccines can also contain dead organisms or parts that cause disease or weakened live organisms that do not cause illness but protect from a full-strength attack. They keep our bodies prepared in case of an attack.
What is the Difference Between a Prophylactic and a Vaccine?
A prophylactic is used to prevent infection, disease, or other unwanted health conditions. A vaccine is a preventative that stimulates the body’s immune system to recognize an organism (bacteria or virus) that causes disease. If exposed to this organism later in life, the immune response is usually effective at destroying it quickly before any symptoms develop.
However, exposure sometimes produces no noticeable effect because the vaccinated individual already has immunity from a previous infection. Vaccines can also contain dead organisms or parts that cause disease or weakened live organisms that do not cause illness but protect from a full-strength attack. Vaccines keep our bodies prepared in case of an attack.
What is the Difference Between a Vector-Borne Disease and an Airborne Disease?
Certain insects transmit vector-borne diseases, including mosquitoes, ticks, and sandflies. In contrast to airborne illnesses such as measles, vector-borne diseases are usually contracted by being bitten by an infected insect or animal.
Airborne diseases are spread when droplets from the mouth or nose of an infected person are expelled into the air and breathed in by someone else.
How Does HIV Differ from Other Viruses?
Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) attacks an essential part of the immune system called CD4 cells. When these cells are destroyed, the body is left vulnerable to infections and diseases that the body would generally fight off.
This makes it easier for a person infected with HIV to catch opportunistic diseases like tuberculosis, pneumonia, and fungal infections.