Disease

Question 1

What can affect the birth and death rate of a country?

Answer 1

Disease, economic status, family needs, attitudes and beliefs, conflict and wars and government policy.

Question 2

What diseases kill millions a year?

Answer 2

Tuberculosis (TB), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and cholera.

Question 3

Why are infant mortality rates high in some countries?

Answer 3

Many babies die from diarrhoea.

Question 4

What is diarrhoea?

Answer 4

a symptom of an illness that causes a runny tummy.

Question 5

What is the difference between an epidemic and a pandemic?

Answer 5

An epidemic is when a disease spreads quickly across a large area or country and an pandemic is when a disease spreads across many countries.

Question 6

What is AIDS?

Answer 6

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome; the final stage of the HIV disease, which causes severe damage to the immune system.

Question 7

What is TB?

Answer 7

A diseases that affects a person’s lungs.

Question 8

What are the 2 main causes of the spread TB?

Answer 8

Poverty and HIV

Question 9

What causes malaria?

Answer 9

Malaria is caused by a type of parasite that is spread by certain kinds of mosquitos (female Anopheles mosquito). When an infected mosquito bites a person, it puts the malaria parasite in the person’s blood. The parasite first enters and multiplies in the liver, before entering the blood system where it multiplies further.

Question 10

What is a parasite?

Answer 10

A plant or animal that lives on or in another living thing and usually harms it.

Question 11

How can people prevent malaria?

Answer 11

1. Sleep under mosquito nets
2. Use preventive medication like prophylaxis
3. Use insect repellents

Question 12

How many children in Africa die from malaria daily.

Answer 12

About 2 000 children.

Question 13

What is diarrhoea a symptom of?

Answer 13

Diarrhoea is a symptom of gastroenteritis, which can be caused by a viral or bacterial infection.

Question 14

What is gastroenteritis?

Answer 14

The infection of the bowel.

Question 15

Name 3 epidemics/pandemics that have wiped out millions of people in the past.

Answer 15

Smallpox, influenza (the common flue) and cholera.

Question 16

What is the real name of the ‘Black Death’?

Answer 16

The Bubonic Plague

Question 17

How did the Black Death spread?

Answer 17

It was spread by fleas that lived on rats.

Question 18

What would happen to people when they got the plague?

Answer 18

They got sores all over their bodies and before they died, parts of their bodies turned black. The Black Death affects different parts of the world at different times in the past. In the 1350’s, the Bubonic Plague killed half of Europe, that could’ve been 100 million people. There was no cure, so people infected either survived or suffered a horrible, painful death.

Question 19

How did smallpox arrive in the Cape?

Answer 19

In 1713 a ship arrived in Cape Town containing sheets infected with the disease, smallpox. Nobody knew the sheets contained smallpox. Local workers took the sheets to their village to wash them. About 12 days later, the workers and their families began to fall ill. The infected people got blisters all over their bodies they developed fevers and became weak. The disease spread rapidly across the Cape. large numbers of sick people died this was the first smallpox epidemic in southern Africa.