4 Epidemiology Communicable Diseases

Question 1

What is a communicable disease

Answer 1

a disease caused by infectious agents and can be passed from 1 person or animal to another.

Question 2

Blood borne disease example nams

Answer 2

HIV
Hepatitis
HBV-HIV co infection

Question 3

Outline HIV

Answer 3

disables the body’s immune system until it can no longer fight infection.

Sexual transmission and mother to child blood routes.

safe sex, disposal of sharps or safe injecting rooms and transfusion. Manageable with anti-retrovirals however there is no vaccine.

Question 4

Outline hepatitis

Answer 4

inflammation of the liver, caused by virus risk factors

A = short term infection acute, prevented by vaccine

B = chronic, vaccine preventable, prenatal, needles, sexual transmission. Prevented by vaccine.

C = chronic, no vaccine, current treatments are 90% effective 8-12 weeks of treatment

Question 5

Outline HBV-HIV co infection

Answer 5

if you have one of these likely to get other too due to their immune system being compromised.

Tenofovir is the recommended preventative medicine.

Question 6

Outline prion diseases

Answer 6

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE-mad cow disease), changes the way brain maps, conformation of a brain protein.

Transmission by cannibalism: Kuru, infected meat, blood.

It is untreatable.

Question 7

What are vector borne diseases

Answer 7

Infect us through parasites.

main vectors: mosquitoes, ticks, fleas and lice.

They are usually treatable however there are some relapses in patients.

Question 8

Vector borne disease example

Answer 8

MALARIA

vector of Anopheles mosquitoes.

Preventable by stopping mosquito bites with things like bed nets and aerosol spray.

It is treatable but some patients have relapses.

Question 9

What are air borne diseases

Answer 9

pathogenic microbes so small they can remain in air and then are breathed in by someone else.

Question 10

Air borne disease examples

Answer 10

TUBERCULOSIS
necessary factor is mycobacterium tuberculosis, 10% of latent cases will develop into disease, treatment: a lot of drugs everyday

MEASLES
highly infectious, droplet spread, ear, brain lung infections, death, brain damage.

Question 11

What is immunisation

Answer 11

when antibodies are formed

vaccines aim to interrupt transmission of disease

Question 12

Transmission depends on…

Answer 12

How infectious a disease is

How many contacts an infectious person makes each day

How long they are infectious

Question 13

Endemic disease

Answer 13

Disease common to a certain area

Question 14

Sporadic disease

Answer 14

random cases, non area specific

Question 15

Epidemic disease

Answer 15

rapid, clustered to specific area outburst

Point source epidemic: specific to one source of infection, simultaneous exposure, brief exposure period,

contagious/propagated epidemic: passed from person to person. eg. on a plane, like the snowball effect, identify trends of time and # of cases.

Question 16

Pandemic disease

Answer 16

Large geographical scale where many people are affected

Question 17

Outbreak

Answer 17

An outbreak or epidemic exists when there are more cases than expected among a specific group of people and/or in a given area, over a particular period of time.

Question 18

All of these definitions encompass a

Answer 18

Person
Place
time

Question 19

Outbreaks occur because

Answer 19

New appearance of an infectious agent (or toxic material) from the environment or an infected source

arrival of susceptible people to an environment with an endemic pathogen

Introduction of effective route of transmission from source to susceptible population (e.g. climate change bringing new mosquito species)