7. Diease and Biosecurity Flashcards
What was life like for the hunter gatherers?
- Humans moved around to find food (no fixed home) so they left faeces and parasites behind
What were the bands of humans like as hunter gatherers?
- Small family bands, separated from others, so a disease might kill a few, but would then die out
- Bands of equal members who shared food, humans evolved to cooperate with each other
What were the kinds of diseases that humans had as hunter gatherers?
- They had a few common diseases: low virulence STDS, gut worms, malaria
- Humans often survived to fairly old ages
What did the agricultural revolution mean for the way society was structured?
- Life in one place: villages and towns of high densities, sharing food and water, excrete where others might contact it
What did the domestication of animals as part of the agricultural revolution cause?
Many diseases of animals passed to us
- Tuberculosis from cattle to humans
- Diseases flourish in crowded animals
What did the storage of water and grains during the agricultural revolution cause?
Attracts rats, mice, cockroaches, etc
- Extra animals that can pass on disease
What were the diets like of humans during the agricultural revolution?
- Restricted diets led to lower immunity
- More grain, less fruit, protein, fats and variety
What are the two types of disease and the causes for them?
- Parasites cause infectious disease
2. Genetic mutations or environmental stress (diet, UV, stress) cause NON-infectious disease
How are parasites classified based on their size?
- Microparasites: viruses, bacteria, protists, fungi
- Macroparasites: worms and Arthropods
How are parasites classified based on where they infect?
Either internal or echo-parasites
What was the end result of the agricultural revolution for humans?
- Shorter life expectancy
- More infection disease, parasite infestation
- Human and animal waste contaminated water supplies (water borne disease such as typhoid)
- Shortage of protein due to restricted diets (lower resistance to disease - Kwashiorkor)
What were the consequences of the industrial revolution?
- Migration into cities (dense living)
- Low hygiene as bedpans and cesspit were emptied in the streets so raw sewerage infected people
- Water supply companies sold water taken from the rivers that the sewers ran into
- Few public taps for the poor
What was the state of disease like during the industrial revolution?
- Half of kids under 5 died of diseases such as Tb, typhoid, dysentery, measles
- Everyone had human fleas and lice
- Epidemics were common due to crowding and ignorance
- New diseases arrived due to fast trade (cholera from India)
What did the Sanitary awakening entail?
- Improve conditions led to reduced poverty and reduced disease
- Public ownership of water supply (aquaducts built)
- Public sewer system meant there was sanitation to break disease transmission
What scientific advancements improved public health understanding during the great sanitary movement?
- Microbes cause disease
- Handwashing, antiseptic surgery
- Pasteurisation of milk
- NOT cures: Prevention and poverty alleviation
