April web

HEALTH
airplanes from endemic countries. Recently,
a massive cholera epidemic in Haiti that
killed over 200,000 was traced to soldiers
who had been brought from another country
to a military base in Haiti. Many infectious
diseases, including tuberculosis, small pox,
cholera, typhoid, and possibly measles were
introduced into Africa by the trans-Saharan,
trans-Atlantic, and Indian Ocean traders.
Population growth forces physical closeness
among people.
Close contact is an excellent avenue
to transmission of diseases from person to
person. As infected people mingle with
others in the population, they spread the
disease to several others. A person with
coronavirus spreads to 2 to 4 people while
one person with measles (the most infectious
disease in the world) spreads to 12 to 18
people. In the case of the COVID-19,
initially, it was thought that transmission was
only through contact with droplets of mucus
or saliva containing the live virus.
By mid-March 2020, it had been established
that the virus could remain airborne for 8
or more hours independent of the droplets
and that it could be spread through faeces.
WHO IS AT RISK?
It has been proven that the majority of
people who get COVID-19 do not become
severely sick and more than 90% recover.
Mortality is reported to be as low as 2% so,
why is everyone panicking and why is the
world shutting down? The reason is that
being a new virus in the human race, we still
have no immunity to it, meaning that it is
very easy for anyone to catch it since their
body is not yet ready to fight it and prevent it
from moving from infection to disease.
While the majority of the people who
get infected do not suffer severe illness, the
same is not true for people whose immunity
is weakened by age (new born babies
and the elderly) or underlying disease like
diabetes, heart disease, cancer, lung disease
etc. Mortality from COVID-19 among this
group of people is as high a 10% to 20%
meaning 1 to 2 out of every 10 infected die.
What does this mean: A young healthy
person gets infected but can continue with
business as usual because they are only
coughing and have a running nose. As they
move around, they infect other people who
then transmit the infection to their loved ones
who are at risk of dying from COVID-19. It
is the reason people are being asked to stay
at home.
WHAT ABOUT OTHER EPIDEMICS AND PANDEMICS?
The best way to stop the spread of an
infectious disease is to break the chain of
spread. If you are sick, decide to be the
last one to get infected by practicing what
will stop the spread. For COVID-19, it is
remaining in isolation until you are healed,
for HIV, it is taking antiretroviral therapy and
not exposing one’s sexual partner to the
virus, for typhoid, it is washing hands after
using the toilet and not handling food.
If you are not infected, prevent spread by
getting vaccinated if there is a vaccine,
keeping away from and taking precaution
around people who are infected is handy.
SYMPTOMS OF COVID-19 VIRUS
APRIL 2020
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