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I remember a friend back in elementry school who caught this because he ate stuff from the floor and drank dirty water. Giardia is the parasite’s causing illness or disease, and is spread through contaminated feces. My friend also ate uncooked food as well, and not only that he also caught this disease by picking up things from surfaces like toys – which is pretty awkward and scary. This disease caused a variety of symptoms such as diarrhea, nausea/upset stomach and several other things I can’t remember.
People, watch what you eat AND drink ! Watch what you touch as well, because my friend caught this disease by touching toys from the surfaces which was a huge part of how he got this disease.
HSV-1 (Herpes Simplex Virus-1) is simply a contagious disease that can be spread when an infected person is producing and shedding the virus. This is actually pretty disgusting because you would wonder if kissing is safe or not, depending on the person’s conditon.
There are actually two types of Herpes viruses: HSV-1 & HSV-2, in which they’re both ubiquitous and contagious. Also they both persist in the body generally by becoming latent and hiding from the immune system in the cell bodies of nerves.
This virus is very dangerous, and you wouldn’t want to catch this. SO, ladies and gentlemen watch who you kiss, and CHECK the persons lips to avoid this terrible disease.
According to this article, “Cholera strikes fear in Dominican Republic, tourists reassured”, the first case of cholera has shown itself in Dominican Republic. A 32-year-old Haitian construction worker who returned to the Dominican Republic from a visit to his homeland was infected with Cholera. Although it is the country’s first case, they are still encouraging tourists to come and not be afraid. Their reasons being that it’s only one case and that they will be keeping an eye out for more. According to the Dr. Eugene Gangarosa, its the perfect time to travel. Tourists are usually sanitary and the country will be more watchful for the disease. There will be tests done and its recommended that tourists have some health insurance and to check their health prior to traveling. I personally would be concerned if I were to travel to Dominican Republic and I learned that there is one case of cholera. If it were me I wouldn’t go because Haiti is next door and I would be worry about it spreading, despite what the article says.
Here is the link to the article:
Another article I read on Cholera is titled Mugabe’s Cholera. This name should ring a bell to those who were in the Call to Action: Crisis in Zimbabwe module. This module was offered in my freshman year, so for those of you who don’t know who he is, Robert Mugabe is both the second and current president of Zimbabwe. He use to be a leader of the liberation movement against the white-minority rule in Zimbabwe, back when it was part of Rhodesia and under British rule. Zimbabwe is a country located in Africa and it use to be one of Africa’s more promising economies. Now it is one of the poorest countries in the world. Only 20% of people are formally employed. The country has the lowest life expectancy age; age 34 for women and 37 for men. Zimbabwe also has one of the highest HIV rates. Health, education and food productions have collapsed. Mugabe’s government have played a major role in the nation’s collapse, he has been the ruler for about 30 or more years.
In this article, Mugabe is blaming the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe on Western Colonialism. Yet the cholera epidemic is actually a direct result of the collapse of public services, including the water and sewer systems that Mugabe wrested from city councils. In the last decade Mugabe has been responsible for destroying Zimbabwe through corruption, the assault on private property and the maniacal printing of money. Mugabe stills continues to pint the finger to the “white people” for everything, even after Zimbabwe’s independence from white minority rule.Mugabe continues to deny responsibility for the cholera outbreak and for the nation’s collapse. The cholera epidemic and famine in Zimbabwe have forced many to cross the Limpopo River in order to escape. This is sad. It shows how one person’s greed and power can cause innocent lives to suffer. In poor nations like Zimbabwe and Haiti, where the government is either bad or unstable, a disease like cholera can have a huge toll on the nation.
The link to the article is this:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/12/mugabes_cholera.html
My group’s disease is Cholera, therefore I decided to look up articles on the disease. I came across one article on SciDev.Net titled Haiti Cholera epidemic caused by weather, says scientists. In this article, it states that weather conditions may be the actual trigger for Haiti’s cholera epidemic. It is believed that climate changes caused by La Niña, and Haiti’s earthquake are two main causes for the cholera outbreak. But apparently, people believe that Cholera was brought over by UN soldiers from Nepal. Cholera is currently an endemic in Nepal and these UN soldiers were stationed near the Artibonite River, where the outbreak first started. Cholera is caused by a bacterium known as Vibrio Cholerae, which forms in contaminated water. It can also spread when feces from an infected person gets into water that will later be consumed by people. Although scientists seem to be blaming weather conditions, people are still arguing that the cause may have been the UN Nepal soldiers instead.
The link to the article is this:
http://www.scidev.net/en/news/haiti-s-cholera-epidemic-caused-by-weather-say-scientists.html
Yeah I don’t know the article is a joke or something but I think it’s not. I mean think of it this way, do you act the same around someone you like and someone you don’t like? Okay then, I rest my case. It is also an infectious disease! It can be pasted on from one to another and then they’re both in love. The reason I was even stupid enough to search up this disease is because this high school year is really weird. So I’ve been in school for about four months? Yeah for each one of these months I’ve liked a different boy. And not like a small crush but it was almost like I WAS IN LOVE!! So this was the pattern, I liked person A and then I found person B and liked him too. Until October I liked both of then until….. I discovered someone even cuter!! Then I started liking him on Halloween and in December I found person D so I liked person C and D. This isn’t a cured disease for me either, I still both of them!! Every time I see one of them in the hallway, my mind would go blank and I start to kind of sweat. I would get butterflies in my stomach and I feel like I’m in heaven. Then afterward for like at least 10 minute, I can’t stop smiling. I think of person C at least once every 10 minute and I think of person D at least once every 2 hour. Would I want to be cured? LOL hell no! I like this disease and it makes me feel so happy! 😀 I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this disease and I will shoot anyone who tries to put me up for treatment. Yeah.. I THINK I”M FALLING IN LOVEEEEEEE x3333333
Mumps is a contagious disease that leads to painful swelling of the salivary glands. The mumps are caused by a virus called Paramyxovirus. This virus spreads from person to person by respiratory droplets such as when you sneeze, or by direct contact with things that has the infected saliva on it. Mumps most commonly affect children ages 2-12 who have not been vaccinated against this disease. The infection can occur at any age. The time between being exposed to the virus and getting sick is usually 12-24 days.
Mumps may also affect the pancreas, the central nervous system, testes.
The symptoms of the mumps are: face swelling, face pain, fever, headache, sore throat. Other symptoms that nay occur to males are: testicle lumps, testicle pain, scrotal swelling.
There is no specific treatment for the mumps. Ice packs and heat packs applied to neck area and tylenol may help relieve the pain. You can relieve symptoms with: extra fluids, soft foods, warm salt water gargles. 
Yaws is a long term infection that affects mainly the skin, bones, and the joints.
It is an infection caused by the spirochete bacterium. It is closely related to syphilis. This disease is not sexually transmitted. It mainly affects children in rural, warm, tropical areas such as the Carribean Islands, Latin America, West Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. Yaws is transmitted by direct contact with the skin sores of infected people.
After 2-4 weeks of infection, they develop a sore called “mother’s yaw” where the bacteria entered the skin. The sore is a growth that looks like a rashberry. The sores are painless. These sores may last for months. More sores would appear before or after the mother yaws. Other symptoms may include bone pain and damage, fever, swelling of the fingers and bones. In the final stage, the sores on the skin and bones can lead to severe disfurgurement and disabilities. This occurs 20% of untreated patients.
They test the skin sore and examine under a special type of microscope called the darkfield examination. They do not take blood tests for yaws. Treatment for yaws is a dose of penicillin G. It is rare for yaws to return.
If yaws is treated in the early stages, yaws can be cured. The skin lesions take sevreal months to heal. Yaws affect the ability, movement, and appearance of the skin and bones. It can deform the nose, legs, palates, and upper jaw.
Okay, so you’ve probably heard of pneumonia before. It’s nothing special if you get it when you’re young, but it can cause complications for AIDS patients and the elderly, since they have weakened immune systems. In fact, it is sometimes known as an “old man’s friend” for that reason. Basically, it is an infection (and then inflammation) of your lungs. Some symptoms include dizziness, high fever, chills, night sweats, coughing, fatigue, and green/yellow mucous. It is quite the unpleasant disease.
And of course, I had it.
The best part? I had it while I was a college student doing research at a hospital…in southern China. It was not the best hospital in the region, but they did have a state of the art neuroscience wing, along with some fantastic doctors. One day, I will talk more about this hospital and my experiences there, but for now, know that I worked there one summer, doing research, and suddenly contracted pneumonia. So, more than likely, I probably contracted this while conducting research in the facility. Oops.
When I first realized something was wrong, I was sitting in an air-conditioned office, talking to some nurses. Mind you, it was about 97 degrees Fahrenheit on the outside world, the humidity was, luckily, staved off by the closed windows in this part of the hospital, and I was relaxing after following some doctors to other non-air-conditioned parts of the hospital.
So, it was strange for me to be shivering.
More than once, I got up out of my chair in the office to walk out to the non-AC’ed hallway just to see if it was just me, or if there was something wrong with the temperature in the hospital. And of course, I realized – it was just me. Something was wrong. I ran back into the office to find the nurses and asked them, in Cantonese, “So, I’m feeling really cold, but I know it’s at least 75 degrees in this room right now…what’s going on…?”
We checked. 103 degree fever. They told me to take the rest of the day off and rest.
When I got home, I said my “hellos” to the “uncle” and “aunt” that I was staying with (we have extremely large “extended families” a.k.a. family friends in China) and passed out on my bed. Then came the night sweats. Those were THE worst. The tossing, turning, coughing-up yellow sputum. The incessant sweat pouring out every pore in my body. I could not sleep in my bed because my room had air-conditioning and I was feverishly cold, so I would attempt to sleep on the couch in the living room with the windows open and the humid breeze of warm air drafting through the window. No avail. Blankets on? Off? Fan on? Off? Sit up? Lie down? Oh, I would never wish that level of intolerable nuisances on anyone.
When I got back to do research in the hospital the next day, it was pretty obvious that I was sick. So, we ran the tests – blood samples, x-rays, listening for the distinctive crackling noise on the stethoscope – bingo. Every time I breathed in, the doctor heard a distinct crackling noise in my lung. The only thing left was to make sure it was not tuberculosis. Thank goodness it wasn’t. When I told my parents (who were happily hanging out in San Francisco), they nearly had instantaneous heart attacks. TB is not something you play around with.
Now, in the states, if someone has pneumonia, we give them a prescription and send them home on their merry way with a prescription. Oh, not so in China. I was on an IV for seven – yes, seven – days. Additionally, I was also on prescription medicine. I had to stay IN the hospital to get treated, then go home and take the medication (and drank some sort of tea that my “aunt” brought over).
The disease is not what I remember most from my experience, but it was more the recovery period. How is it that even at a reputed hospital in China, I still had to be on an IV for seven days, whereas in the US, all I would have done is gotten a prescription for – probably – azithromycin for 5 days and have continued working/going to school? Think of how this would affect an average Chinese citizen. If he/she contracted pneumonia, he’d then have to take off work for seven days, lose seven days’ worth of pay, just to hopefully get better. Now, I don’t like to brag, but I’m a relatively healthy individual. What about an older Chinese person, or a younger one with a less developed immune system.
Disease is pervasive. It knows no social bounds, and its effects will not only affect an individual and his/her family, but will expand towards other facets of society. Will we be able to do that?
the infectious disease challenge 
