Infectious Diseases (communicable diseases):

Diseases spread or transmitted when certain microbes pass from a person to another.

• How microbes get transmitted:

By faeces By Breath By Insects By Direct Contact

1) Diseases spread by faeces:

Diseases caused: amoebic dysentery, bacillary dysentery, polio, hepatitis (type A), cholera,
typhoid, most common diarrhoea and worms (ascaris, hookworm and roundworm).

Faeces: waste matter that passes out of the body from the bowels after digestion.
Faces contain microbes. Some of them are harmless but many are not if they enter another
person's body. Faeces spread from:

Drinking water Flies The hands

Water supply can get contaminated by
faeces and/or eggs of worms.
Boiling and filtration can kill the
microbes in water.
Insects like flies feed on faeces Microbes remain on hands
and carry the microbes on their
after going to the toilet.
feet or saliva.

2) Diseases spread by breath:

Diseases caused: common cold, influenza, bronchitis and tuberculosis (TB) and leprosy.

Sneezing, coughing and talking spread tiny droplets of water with the air we breathe out.
When other people breath the air excreted by our
Each body has its own microbes that get transmitted
lungs, they may get infected. to other people's bodies as pathogens. Pathogens are
fought by antigens causing infection.

3) Diseases spread by insects:

Diseases caused: malaria, River blindness, sleeping sickness and plague.
The bites of insects can spread diseases. Female Anopheles mosquitoes transmit malaria.

4) Diseases spread by direct contact:

Diseases caused: Fungus infections on the skin, leprosy, STDs (sexually transmitted diseases)
including AIDS and Hepatitis (type B).
Leprosy is only slightly contagious.
People can work or live amongst people
Contagious diseases: diseases spread by direct contact (touching). with leprosy without getting infected.

- The virus HIV causes AIDS.

- STDs are transmitted through body fluids.
- STDs are spread through contaminated syringes, surgical instruments and blood
transfusions.