Infectious Diseases

The management of public health overall has really progressed over time. Being that infectious diseases were the cause of so many illnesses and deaths, there was an ever growing need for some serious public health planning to be put into place in order to gain control over the spread of the infectious diseases. Over time, through perseverance and persistence, public health conditions have improved tremendously. A good management strategy will be to continue to put an emphasis on public health advocacy, community awareness, governmental support and the participation of various health professional’s. If this is accomplished, we can maintain a certain amount of quality control over infectious diseases.

An infectious disease is “A disease that can be transmitted from person to person or from organism to organism, and is caused by eg viruses and bacteria” (Cytos Biotechnology Online, 2009). Dating back from the early 1800’s, our public health system lacked structure and relevant resources, so there were many different afflictions that would literally kill thousands of people on a regular basis.

When a potentially deadly disease surfaced, like cholera for example, it was passed through a variety of ways. “Cholera is an acute, diarrheal illness caused by infection of the intestine with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae” (Center for Disease Control and Prevention Online, 2008). One major way this type of an epidemic would occur was through the feces of an infected person. In those days, they did not have adequate sewage systems or effective sanitation procedures so this lead to more people being infected through unfiltered drinking water and contaminated food sources. They didn’t even have running water inside the houses so the sewage went into the rivers. These same rivers are where they would get their drinking water. These living conditions seem so primitive compared to the things we...