29.03.2024

Ways of dealing with infectious diseases

To neutralize the source of infection, if the person using the hospitalization or isolation and treatment. Vaccination, which reduces the probability of Contracting one or another infectious disease, it also reduces the number of sources of the pathogen, as it helps to minimize the risk of infection.

In this way fight infections for example, when an epidemic situations. If the source of infection are animals, they are destroyed (at rabies, rinderpest, foot and mouth disease).

It is important to neutralize the source of the infection completely is not always possible.

Infectious diseases spread in the presence of three factors:

  • source (reservoir) of the infectious agent;
  • the mechanism of transmission of exciter;
  • susceptible to infection people.

Eliminating one of these factors leads to the cessation of the spread of infectious disease and eradicate it.

Prophylactic (to prevent) and anti – (suppression of an already existing infectious diseases) activities are conducted in three areas:

  • neutralization of the source of the pathogen;
  • elimination of transmission of exciter;
  • improving the immunity of the population to infection.

Elimination of transmission of infection is largely achieved through the observance of sanitary-and-hygienic norms. Intestinal infectious diseases (dysentery, typhoid, etc.) the spread of infection is minimised through the holding of different health measures (personal hygiene, sanitary improvement of dwellings, proper water supply, catering, fighting flies, etc.). When respiratory tract infections are extremely difficult to interrupt transmission. Partly to protect themselves from infection by wearing a special respirator or gauze bandages of 4-6 layers because the factor of transmission is the air. If you have blood infections elimination of transmission paths is achieved by destruction of vectors (insects) insecticide preparations.

Improving the immunity of the population to the infection the immunization is achieved by the application of preventive vaccination. Using vaccination successfully carried out the fight against such diseases as tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, hepatitis B, polio, tubercules, mumps, rubella and many others. Vaccinations, or, in other words, vaccination, stimulate the immune (protective) system of the person – he gets specific (acquired) immunity to fight the diseases, which can not resist its natural immunity.

Vaccination is the introduction into the body a weakened or killed disease-causing agent (or artificially created analogue of the protein agent) in order to stimulate the primary immune response – the production of the body’s antibodies to fight the pathogen of the disease – in such a way that when meeting with a specific pathogen (what causes disease) the immune system can “remember it” and answer the corresponding reaction with arresting development of the disease or reducing the severity of its manifestations.

Why vaccination is the most effective and dominant way of fighting infectious diseases? If deactivation of the source – is actually the struggle with the consequences already erupted infections (also not always possible to identify this source, especially atypical or carriers of microorganisms and neutralize the source), and the elimination of the transmission of the pathogen to prevent the spread of infections only partially, the vaccination fights the disease on all fronts – prevents the risk of a disease and not just its consequences. Through vaccination in the world has eliminated such a dangerous disease like smallpox, which was made possible thanks to vaccination; on the verge of extinction polio.

Besides the fact that vaccines in many cases it just doesn’t give the opportunity of Contracting a dangerous disease, mass vaccination enhances the immunity of the population as a whole, because among vaccinated against the disease, the risk of occurrence and transmission from person to person dramatically reduced.

Thus, vaccination aimed at addressing the two key factors that entail large-scale spread of infectious diseases.

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