Health and Its Failure
Significance of Health
Health is described as the state of Complete Physical Mental Sand Social Well Being. Thus Being Healthy Means That One Feels Good Physically. Being Healthy is far more than just being free from diseases.
For maintaining a healthy Life Cycle, a Person Needs to balanced and Varied diet and needs to Exercise Live regularly in a proper shelter and get enough sleep Maintaining good hygiene also reduces the chances of developing an infection.
Health
Health is a state of physical, mental, and social well-being.
• The conditions necessary for good health are:
(i) Good physical and social environment.
(ii) Good economic conditions.
- A good physical and social environment includes clean surroundings, good sanitation, proper garbage disposal, and clean drinking water.
- Good economic conditions include job opportunities for earning to have nutritious food and leading a healthy life.
- Personal and Community Issues Both Matter for Health
Community Health
- All those activities which people do both individually and in groups for the development of their society, constitute community health.
- Personal and community health are supplementary to each other.
- We protect ourselves by keeping our bodies clean.
- For this, we also require a good and healthy environment in our surroundings.
- We can have this only by the means of community health and development.
- So, both personal and community health are interrelated.
A disease regularly usually indicates a malfunction in the body. A Doctor is able to diagnose disease is by identifying the symptoms physical mental or both.
Differences between being healthy and Diseases-free
| Being Healthy | Being Disease-free |
| It is a state of being well enough to function well physically, mentally, and socially. | It is a state of absence from diseases. |
| It refers to the individual, physical and social environment. | It refers only to the individual. |
| The individual has good health. | The individual may have good health or poor health. |
Disease and Its Causes
What does the disease look like?
- When a person is affected by a disease either the functioning or the appearance of one or more systems of the body will change for the worse.
- These changes give rise to symptoms and signs of disease.
- On the basis of the symptoms the physicians look for the signs of a particular disease and conduct tests to confirm the disease.
Types of Diseases
(i) Acute Diseases: Acute diseases that last for only a very short period of time and affect the body suddenly and quickly. Example: Cold, cough, typhoid, etc.
(ii) Chronic Diseases: The diseases which last for a long time, even as much as a life time, are called chronic diseases. Example: Diabetes, tuberculosis, elephantiasis etc.
Causes of Diseases
Diseases are caused by:
- Pathogens like viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoans, or worms.
- Poor health and undernourishment.
- Hereditary and genetic disorders.
- Lack of proper treatment of immunization.
- Environmental pollution (air, water, etc.)
Infectious and Non-infectious Diseases
(i) Infectious Diseases: The diseases which spread due to infection by micro-organisms are called infectious diseases.
It is communicated from a diseased person to a healthy person, caused by some biological
agents/pathogens like viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoans, and fungi worms.
(ii) Non-infectious Diseases: The disease which does not spread by contact between infected and healthy person through air and water, is called non-infectious disease.
Example: Arthritis, heart disease.
Pictures of Different Micro-organisms
SARS Viruses
- SARS viruses are coming out of the surface of an infected cell (see the arrows for example).
- 500 nanometer = 0.5 micrometer = 0.001 millimeter.
Trypanosoma
- Trypanosoma is a protozoan organism.
- It causes sleeping sickness.
- The saucer-shaped substance lying next to the protozoa is a red blood cell.
Staphylococcus bacteria
- The Staphylococcus bacteria causes acne.
- The scale is indicated at the line at the top left of the picture. It is 5 micrometers long
Adult roundworm
- Adult roundworm is found in the small intestine.
- Its technical name is Ascaris Lumbricoides.
- The ruler next to it shows 4 centimeters to give an idea of the scale.
Leishmania
- Leishmania, the protozoan organism causes kala-azar.
- The organisms are oval-shaped, and each has one long whip-like structure.
- The immune cell is about ten micrometers in diameter.
Micro-organisms
| Infectious Agents | Diseases |
| Viruses | Common cold, influenza, measles, chicken pox, AIDS, Hepatitis-B etc. |
| Bacteria | Cholera, typhoid, TB, tetanus, anthrax, food poisoning etc. |
| Fungi | Skin infections |
| Protozoan | Malaria, kala-azar, amoebic dysentery, sleeping sickness |
| Worms | Intestinal infections, elephantiasis |
Antibiotics
- Antibiotics blocks biochemical pathways important for bacteria. Hence, they are effective against them. Example: Penicillin, tetracycline.
- Many bacteria make a cell wall to protect themselves, the antibiotics (Penicillin) block the bacterial process that builds a cell walls.
- Antibiotics work only against bacteria and not against viruses.
Means of Spread of Infectious Diseases
- Infectious diseases spread from an infected person to a healthy person through the air, water, food, vectors, physical contact, and sexual contact.
Through air: By sneezing and coughing, the microbes spread into the air and enter the body of a healthy person, like the common cold, tuberculosis, pneumonia, etc.
Through water : The microbes enter into our body by drinking/eating polluted and contaminated water/food, like cholera, amoebic dysentery etc.
Vectors: Some organisms like the female anopheles mosquito also work as a vector of disease, like malaria, dengue, yellow fever, etc.
Life Cycle of Malaria
AIDS (Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome)
Causes of AIDS
- AIDS is caused by a retrovirus called HIV (Human Immuno Deficiency Virus).
Method of transmission of AIDS
- The transmission of AIDS from an infected to a healthy person takes place :
through sexual contact
blood transfusion
use of infected needle or blade etc.
This may also get transmitted from the infected mother to her fetus.
Prevention of AIDS
- Avoid transfusion of infected blood. This can be done by testing whether the blood is HIV negative or not.
- Always use disposable needles and syringes.
- Avoid sexual contact with unknown people.
- Avoid the same razor used in the salons.
ORGAN – Specific and Tissue-specific Manifestations
Disease-causing microbes enter the body by different means and go to different organs and tissues.
(i) Microbes which enter through the nose are likely to go to the lungs. (Bacteria which cause tuberculosis of lungs).
(ii) Microbes which enter through the mouth are likely to stay in the gut (bacteria which causes typhoid) or liver (bacteria which causes jaundice).
(iii) Virus which causes AIDS enters the body through sexual organs during sexual contact and spread through the lymph to all parts of the body and damages the immune system.
(iv) Virus which causes Japanese encephalitis (brain fever) enters the body through mosquito bites and goes and infects the brain.
Principles of Treatment
- The treatment of infectious diseases consists of two steps. They are to reduce the effects of the disease (symptoms) and to kill the microbes which caused the disease.
(i) The treatment of infectious diseases: consists of two steps. They are to reduce the effects of
the disease (symptoms) and to kill the microbes which caused the disease.
(ii) To kill the microbes: This can be done by taking suitable antibiotics and drugs which kill the microbes and the disease is cured.
Principles of Prevention
- There are two ways of preventing infectious diseases. They are general ways and specific ways.
(i) General ways of prevention: Public hygiene is most important for the prevention of infectious diseases. Proper and sufficient food for everyone will make people healthy to resist infection.
- Airborne diseases can be prevented by living in conditions that are not crowded. Water-borne diseases can be prevented by providing safe drinking water.
- Vector-borne diseases can be prevented by providing a clean environment.
(ii) Specific ways of prevention: There are disease-specific measures that are used to fight them. It is done by Immunisation.
- This is the process of introducing a weakened pathogen inside the body of the host to fool his/her immune system to produce antibodies against that particular disease.
- Not only does our immune system fight the disease (feeble pathogen), but also keeps a memory of the incident by keeping those antibodies in the blood.
- Thus, next time even if the disease will strike the host’s body with full vigor, the body will be able to protect itself with the help of these antibodies.
This is also the basic law followed by vaccination programs done for infants.
List of Few Diseases
Our health is affected not only by an unbalanced diet but also by diseases causing organisms That Maybe Water – borne air-borne or foodborne. Some Diseases are Caused by infection through microorganisms, insects, and parasites. Infection develops.
| Disease | Pathogen | Carrier | Symptoms |
| Malaria | Protozoa | Female anopheles mosquito, Cockroaches etc. | Recurrent fever, chills |
| Typhoid | Bacteria – Salmonella | “ | High fever and intestinal infections |
| AIDS | Virus – HIV | – | Not a disease in itself, it affects our lymph glands thereby decreasing our immunity |
| Dengue | Virus | Female aides Egypte mosquito | Headache + fever |
| Worms | Worms in intestine | – | Stomach ache |
| Kala Azar | Protozoa – Leishmania | Sandfly | Brain fever |
| Round worms | Ascaris in intestine | – | Stomach ache |
| SARS | Bacteria | – | – |
| Swine flu | Virus | Pig + human | Fever – spreads |
| Bird flu | Virus | Birds | Fever – spreads |
| Ebola | Ebola Virus | – | Fever spreads |