B1: Fighting Disease-Past and Future

Question 1

When did Ignaz Semmelweis work in Vienna General Hospital?

Answer 1

During the 1840s.

Question 2

What did Semmelweis notice?

Answer 2

He noticed that women were dying in huge numbers after childbirth from a disease called puerperal fever (childbed fever).

Question 3

What caused the large amount of deaths, according to Semmelweis?

Answer 3

He believed that doctors were spreading the disease on their unwashed hands.

Question 4

How did Semmelweis prevent the spread of disease?

Answer 4

• He told doctors entering his ward to wash their hands in an antiseptic solution (death rates fell from 12% to 2%)
• The antiseptic solution killed the bacteria on doctors’ hands although Semmelweis did not know this)

Question 5

Why were Semmelweis’ methods abandoned after he left the hospital?

Answer 5

He could not prove why his idea worked

Question 6

Why could bacteria be a big problem in the future?

Answer 6

• Antibiotic-resistant strains would mean current treatments would no longer clear an infection
• A new strain could evolve and be one that we have not come across yet so no-one would be immune to it
• The new strain of bacteria could spread rapidly among the population and create an epidemic

Question 7

Why could viruses be a big problem in the future?

Answer 7

• Viruses also mutate often so it make sit hard to develop vaccines against them because their DNA changes causing them to have different antigens
• If the virus evolved it could be very infectious and deadly
• Precautions could be taken to stop the virus spreading (quarantine) but it would be hard to enforce
• Vaccines and antiviral drugs could be developed but they would take a lot of time to mass produce
• Virus pandemics could kill billions of people all over the world