10.1 Infectious Diseases

Question 1

What are infectious diseases?

Answer 1

Infectious diseases are diseases that are caused by organisms known as pathogens

Question 2

What is a pathogen?

Answer 2

An organism that causes diseases

Question 3

Infectious diseases are also sometimes called

Answer 3

Communicable diseases

Question 4

Why are infectious diseases also called communicable diseases?

Answer 4

Because they are passed from infected to uninfected people

Question 5

What is disease transmission?

Answer 5

The transfer of a pathogen from a person infected with that pathogen into an uninfected person

Question 6

Disease transmission occurs through

Answer 6

Direct contact, through the air or water or by animal vectors such as insect

Question 7

Define disease

Answer 7

An illness or disorder of the body or mind that leads to poor health

Question 8

Each disease is associated with

Answer 8

A set of signs or symptoms

Question 9

Why can some infectious diseases only spread from one person to another by direct contact?

Answer 9

Because the pathogen cannot survive outside the human body

Question 10

What are some places that pathogens can survive in?

Answer 10

Water, human food, faeces, or animals(including insects). Their diseases are transmitted indirectly from a person to person

Question 11

What is a disease carrier (or simply carrier)?

Answer 11

A person infected with a pathogen who shows no symptoms(does not have the disease himself) but can be the source of infection in other people (not carrier of an inherited disease)

It can be very difficult to trace them as a source of infection

Question 12

What is transmission cycle?

Answer 12

The way in which a pathogen passes from one host to another host

Question 13

How do control methods attempt to break transmission cycles?

Answer 13

By removing the conditions that favour the spread of the pathogen

Question 14

Control is only possible when

Answer 14

The cause of the disease and its method of transmission are known and understood

Question 15

Give one example of a control measure for many infectious diseases

Answer 15

Vaccination

Question 16

Vaccination works by

Answer 16

Making us immune to the specific pathogen so that they do not live and reproduce within us and do not spread to others so breaking the transmission cycle

Question 17

What is disease eradication?

Answer 17

The complete breakage of the transmission cycle(stoping all transmission of the disease) of a pathogen so that there are no more cases of the disease caused by the pathogen anywhere in the world.

Question 18

What are the two diseases that have so far been eradicated?

Answer 18

In 1980 WHO declared that the smallpox had been eradicated
In 2011 rinderpest, a severe disease of livestock, was eradicated

Question 19

What is an endemic disease?

Answer 19

A disease that is always in a population

Question 20

What is the causative agent (pathogen) of cholera?

Answer 20

Vibrio Cholarae, bacterium(prokaryote)

Question 21

What is the causative agent (pathogen) of malaria?

Answer 21

Four species of plasmodium, protoctist(eukaryote)
-Plasmodium falciparum
-Plasmodium malariae
-Plasmodium ovale
-Plasmodium vivax

Question 22

What is the causative agent of HIV/AIDS

Answer 22

Human immunodeficiency virus(HIV), virus

Question 23

What is the causative agent of tuberculosis?

Answer 23

Mycobacterium tuberculosis and mycobacterium bovis, bacterium(prokaryote)

Question 24

What is incidence of a disease?

Answer 24

The incidence of a disease is the number of people who are diagnosed with the disease over a certain period of time usually a week month or year

Question 25

What is the prevalence of a disease?

Answer 25

The prevalence of a disease is the number of people who have the disease at any one time

Question 26

What is the epidemic?

Answer 26

An epidemic occurs when there is a sudden increase in the number of people with a disease

Question 27

What is a pandemic?

Answer 27

Pandemic occurs when there is an increase in the number of cases of the disease throughout a continent or across the world

Question 28

What is the mortality rate?

Answer 28

The number of deaths over a particular length of time (usually a year)

Question 29

How is the data collected for incidence prevalence and mortality rate standardised

Answer 29

By expressing it as a proportion of the population for example ‘per 1000 people’