Chapter 1: Why do we fall ill?
HEALTH AND FAILURE
1.Signifance of health
Health has been described as the state of complete physical, mental and social well being.Thus, being healthy means that you feel good physically, you have a positive outlook and are able to cope with the social and mental pressures without any great difficulty.Being healthy is far more than just being free from disease.
For keeping a healthy life cycle of a person needs to a balanced and varied diet it has to take exercise,lives in a proper shelter and takes enough sleep. In addition, good has been tend to reduce the chance of infection.
2.Overlap of personal and community issues for health
Human being live in society.Our social environment therefore is an important factor in our individual health.We live in villages,towns or cities.In such places,our physical environment is decided by our social environment.For example, just think what would happen if no agency is ensuring that garbage is collected and disposed ? What would happen if no one takes responsibility for clearing the drains ensuring that waste water doesn't collect in the the street or open spaces?
In this way,if there are heaps of garbage and trash is littered here and there,or if there is open drain water lying stagnant around where we live, the possibility of poor health increases.
DISEASE AND ITS CAUSES
Occasionally human health is negatively affected due to physiological malfunctioning, psychological reason or pathogenic organisms.Sickness, illness, aliment or disease is a disorder that affects an organism.The term disease means DISEASE or without ease or discomfort.It has a specific cause and can be recognised by particular signs or symptoms.
Disease can be defined as an impairment of the normal state of the living organism that disturbs or modifies the performance of the vital functions and is a response to environmental factors,to specific infective agents, to inherent defects of the organism or to combination of these factors.
SOURCES OF DISEASE
Human health is effected by various factors, causes or sources.These factors are of following types:
1.Intrinsic or Internal Factors
2.Extrinsic or External Factors
3.Levels of Important Causes
TYPES OF DISEASES
1.Acute diseases
2.Chronic diseases
3.Congential diseases
4.Acquired diseases
INFECTIOUS DISEASE
1.INFECTION AGENTS
Organisms that can cause disease are found in wide range of categories of classification.Some of them are viruses,some are fungi and some are unicellular animals, the protozoans .Some diseases are also caused by multicellular organisms such as different kinds of worms.
Common examples of diseases caused by virus are the common cold,influenza, dengue,fever and AIDS.Diseases like typoid fever,cholera, tuberculosis and anthrax are caused by bacteria.Many common skin infections are caused by different kinds of fungi.Protozoans cause many familiar diseases such as malaria and kala-azar.Worms tend to cause a variety of intestinal infections and elephantiasis. Member of each one of these categories- viruses, bacteria,so on - have many biological characteristic in common.
2.MEANS OF SPREAD OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES
Infectious diseases spread from one infected person to other normal persons by a variety of method.
1.Air-borne diseases,e.g., common cold, pneumonia and tuberculosis.Such disease-causing microbes are spread through the air.This occurs through the little droplets thrown out by an infected person who sneezes or coughs.Someone standing close by can breathe in these droplets, and the microbes get chance to start a new infection.
2.Water-borne diseases e.g.,cholera. Infectious diseases can also spread through water.This occurs if the stool from someone suffering from an infectious gut disease,such as cholera or amoebiasis,gets mixed with the drinking water used by the people living nearby.
3.Sexually-transmited diseases,e.g., Syphilis and AIDS.However,such sexually transmitted diseases are not spread casual physical contacts include handshakes,hugs, sports such as wrestling or any of the other ways in which we touch each other socially.
4.Formite borne diseases.Articles coming in contact with patients are a source of infection e.g.,door handles,taps, garments, currency, utensils, crockery,etc..
5.Spread of disease through vectors.Many animals which live with us may carry diseases.These animals carry the infecting agents from a sick person to another potential host.
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