Don’t panic if one of your family members has contracted an infectious disease. When you have the knowledge of infectious diseases and the basic means and ways of protection, you will not be helpless. How to master these preventive skills? It is necessary to learn some basic medical knowledge.
I. What is an infectious disease?
An infectious disease is a contagious disease that occurs when a pathogenic microorganism infects the human body.
There are three conditions that must be met for an infectious disease to occur: the pathogen, the body, and the environment in which they live. Similarly, the epidemiological process of infectious diseases requires three basic links: the source of infection, the transmission route, and the susceptible population. Therefore, the prevention of infectious diseases should be aimed at these basic links. Early detection and control of the source of infection, early diagnosis, early isolation is an important measure.
1.What are pathogens?
Pathogens include microorganisms and parasites. The point of difference between infectious diseases and other diseases is that every known infectious disease is basically caused by a pathogenic microorganism that has been mastered by humans. As microorganisms evolve, new infectious diseases arise. Therefore, each infectious disease is caused by a specific pathogen.
The recognition of many infectious diseases throughout history has been based on the recognition of their clinical epidemiological features before the recognition of their pathogens. For example, a German scholar, in a German mining town, found that anthrax killed thousands of cattle and sheep, overnight. It also endangered the lives of shepherds and fur traders. He saw many small rods and long thread-like objects in the blood of the sick sheep and guessed that the pathogenic bacteria. In 1882, he discovered Mycobacterium tuberculosis, for which he was awarded the 1905 Nobel Prize in Medicine. Later, he traveled to many countries and regions, respectively examined and studied plague, leprosy, cholera, malaria, foot-and-mouth disease, sleeping sickness, and black fever and other terminal diseases, and proposed many effective protective measures, which greatly reduced the morbidity and mortality of diseases. German Hygiene Day”. Contemporary examples, such as the plague that shocked the world in 2003, are also known. There are still some infectious agents that have not yet been discovered.
2. Do all pathogens enter the body and cause disease?
This depends on the ability of the pathogen to spread in the body (invasive force on the body), the size of the pathogen’s virulence, the number of pathogens and the variability of pathogens.
3. The 3 basic conditions for the prevalence of infectious diseases.
(1) the source of infection: the source of infection that the pathogen to grow and reproduce in the body and can be expelled from the body of people and animals. Therefore, the control of the source of infection will control the source of the spread of infectious diseases.
What are the sources of infection?
That is, patients with infectious diseases, latent infections, carriers of pathogens (viruses, bacteria) and infected animals.
(2) transmission route: is the pathogen leaves the source of infection, the pathway to another susceptible person. This is the key to cut off the spread of the disease.
What are the ways of transmission?
(1) air, droplets, dust, etc., mainly seen in infectious diseases of the respiratory tract, such as measles, diphtheria and flu, etc.
②Water, food, flies, etc., mainly seen in infectious diseases of the digestive tract, such as: typhoid, dysentery, cholera, etc.
③Hands, utensils, toys, etc., also known as daily contact transmission, can spread both infectious diseases of the digestive tract (such as dysentery) and respiratory tract infectious diseases such as (diphtheria).
④Blood-sucking arthropods (insect vector transmission), such as malaria, BSE, and black fever.
⑤ blood, body fluids, blood products, such as hepatitis, AIDS, etc.
(6) Soil, both pathogenic buds (such as tetanus, anthrax) or larvae (such as hookworms), eggs (such as roundworms) when contaminating the soil, the soil becomes the transmission route.
(3) Susceptible people: That is, people who lack immunity to a particular infectious disease. If there is both the source of infection and the appropriate transmission route, the epidemic of infectious diseases can easily occur.
Second, the prevention of infectious diseases
To control the source of infection, cut off the transmission route, to protect the susceptible population in three ways.
1, control the source of infection, cut off the transmission of methods:
(1) isolate the source of infection: the source of infection is mostly patients, not the same period of patients, the size of the contagious vary. Generally, the clinical symptoms period, the most infectious. Patients are best treated in isolation at infectious disease hospitals, especially those with elderly and children at home, and those who live and dine in groups.
(2) Isolation time: the time spent away from the patient and isolating the patient is subject to the longest incubation period.
(3) For different transmission routes, give different disinfection measures and protection: prevent the spread and transmission of infectious diseases. Specific methods and points to note are as follows.
Airborne: including droplets, dust and other transmission of respiratory infectious diseases, generally easy to occur in winter and spring, so pay attention to timely increase and decrease clothing, avoid public places, densely populated places. In addition, pay attention to indoor air circulation and prevent the occurrence of epidemics by reducing the susceptibility of the population to a minimum level with the intervention of universal implementation of automatic manual immunization, such as influenza vaccination and influenza vaccination.
Waterborne transmission: For example, the occurrence of cholera, dysentery and typhoid is related to the degree of water contamination and the amount of water consumed. Schistosomiasis and leptospirosis are associated with exposure to sewage.
Food transmission: All intestinal infectious diseases and some respiratory infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and diphtheria can cause transmission through contaminated food.