Most Prominent Infectious Diseases In Developing Countries example essay topic

Illness and death from infectious diseases are particularly tragic because they are preventable and treatable. Not surprisingly, the poorest and most vulnerable are the most severely affected by infectious disease. Infectious diseases are a major cause of death, disability and social and economic turmoil for millions around the world. Poverty stricken countries lack access to health care. Reports show that in nations with the lowest economic status the causes of death are primarily infectious and nutritional diseases.

Respiratory infections like the flu, pneumonia, diphtheria, and tuberculosis and gastrointestinal illnesses like dysentery and viral diarrhea kill children and adults most commonly in these countries. Unlike the United States, many children in these poor countries do not survive childhood diseases like chicken pox and measles. Also different from the United States, over 50% of deaths were due to infectious and parasitic diseases. In these developing countries chronic diseases such as cancer are only responsible for one fourth of all deaths, whereas in the US chronic diseases are responsible for about three fourths of all deaths. Very crowded and poor living conditions make the people living in poverty vulnerable to infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and cholera. Poor nutrition and poor immune systems are high risk factors for several major killers including lower respiratory infections, tuberculosis and measles.

In these poor countries there is limited access to health care. For example according to table 21.3, in the United States there are approximately 406 people per every doctor. In a poor country such as Ethiopia there are as many as 36,660 people per doctor. This means that for each person in the country to get seen one time a year every doctor would have to see over 100 patients a day every day of the week.

Limited access to drugs makes treatable conditions like malaria, HIV, and tuberculosis fatal for the poor. The most prominent infectious diseases in developing countries are malaria, schistosomiasis and trypanosomiasis. Malaria is the leading cause of death in tropical countries. More than one million deaths occur each year. Malaria is a vector borne parasitic infection. It is caused by a parasite that is transmitted through the bite of the Anopheles mosquito.

Plasmodium is the causative organism. People infected with the parasite that causes malaria could experience weeks or months of bad health. Children and pregnant women are less likely to recover than adults who have built up immunity to the disease. Malaria has increased a lot in Africa and other tropical and poverty stricken areas. Plasmodium has become resistant to chloroquine which is the antimalarial drug. A recent report showed that nearly 25,000 childhood deaths per day are due to only seven infectious diseases.

These include malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea, measles, whooping cough, tetanus, and tuberculosis. In many of these deaths, malnutrition is an influencing factor. In developing nations, the lack of safe drinking water, not enough food, poor housing, and poor sanitation are all factors in the high rates of infectious diseases. In the urban life, too many people are crowded into small dirty areas. Airborne infections are virtually everywhere. Disease carrying nasty animals are everywhere.

Flies, rats, cockroaches, lice, and mice are common. In rural areas infections like typhus and yellow fever and Chagas are common. The opossum carries Trypanosoma cruz i, which does not cause it to get sick. However, when a bug bites it and then carries it to a human it is fatal.

The Triatoma bug is found in Latin America and carries this disease. These poor people in Latin America live in thatched roofs and dirt floors, just where the Triatoma bug thrives. The repercussions of these diseases are more than the statistics of death. Poverty not only characterizes the circumstances in which infectious diseases thrive, but poverty is intensified by lost productivity. When people are sick and poor they do not receive the educational opportunity they could, which again increases the poverty.

Something needs to be done in these developing countries to improve the quality of life, otherwise these diseases will continue to run rapid through the countries and mutate.