How is the Globe working towards disease eradication?


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The global eradication efforts for the benefit of global health and disease elimination have been very good as two diseases have been fully eradicated from the world and many diseases have been eradicated from certain countries. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) is making large strides to eradicate more diseases in the coming years as they’ve seen cases drop dramatically over the past 35 years on a number of diseases like polio and guinea worm. In this article, we will talk about what is being done in regards to global disease eradication, and what you can do to play your part. 

What is disease eradication? 

Copy: Eradication is the reduction of an infectious disease’s prevalence in the global host population to zero. There is no set way to eradicate diseases but there are a series of practices and precautions that can be taken to prevent the spread of a disease,  like educating the population on diseases and the effects of them, and vaccination programs. 

But the two diseases that have been eradicated are smallpox in humans and rinderpest in ruminants (mammals, like cattle) has affected the health of many on a global scale. The diseases once eradicated are no longer in the outside world. However, they are kept in a highly secure laboratory that is not disclosed to the general public. Thousands of health experts and scientists worked together for countless hours daily to figure out the best options for the eradication of these fatal diseases.

What disease can not be eradicated?

Copy: For a disease to be eligible for eradication it needs to be a disease that you can physically obtain from another person or animal, so it has to be infectious. This means that the globe cannot work towards the complete eradication of natural-born bodily diseases like heart diseases and cancers. Although this may be a sad thing to see this doesn’t mean diseases like these can’t be prevented or beaten in the body as treatments such as chemotherapy for cancer are developing. Likewise, more awareness is being raised on how to prevent heart issues as there are more and more health experts by the day helping people prevent such diseases.

What diseases can and have been eradicated?

Copy: WHO has declared that two diseases have been eradicated by a team of scientists and health experts. These diseases are :

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Smallpox 

Copy: Smallpox is a deadly and dangerous disease that affected humans for years. Naturally occurring smallpox was wiped out worldwide by 1980, the result of an unprecedented global immunisation campaign. Samples of the smallpox virus have been kept for research purposes. This disease was eradicated as a result of the smallpox vaccine. This means this was a disease eradicated by vaccine which was a very large step in the scientific world as they found a working formula and can add that to the others so for other diseases they have another formula to try that they know has worked before.

Rinderpest

Copy: Known as cattle plague, this was a disease caused by the rinderpest virus which primarily infected cattle and buffalo. Infected animals suffered from symptoms such as fever, wounds in the mouth, diarrhoea, discharge from the nose and eyes, and eventually death. Rinderpest was declared eradicated by WHO on 25th May 2011.

Which diseases are next on the eradicated list?

Copy: There are a few prioritised diseases that WHO is working on eradicating next to make progress on global disease elimination. These diseases are a part of its expanded programme: measles, poliomyelitis, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus and tuberculosis. However, the two most likely diseases to be eradicated next are polio and guinea worm as the number of cases has dramatically dropped over the last 35 years. Guinea worm cases were at 3.5 million human infections in countries like Africa and Asia. Yet in 2020, only 27 human cases were recorded. For polio in 1988, there were 350,000 cases to a recorded 33 cases in 2018.

Polio

Polio is a debilitating and life-threatening disease caused by the poliovirus. The virus spreads from person to person and can affect an individual’s spinal cord, which can end up causing paralysis (can’t move parts of your muscular-skeletal system). 

There are only three countries where the disease is still endemic. A disease is said to be endemic in a population when that infection is constantly maintained at a baseline level. These countries are Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan. It’s eradicated from the rest of the world. There is a polio vaccination that the UK and the US were offering – two countries that have been polio-free since the 1980s.

Guinea worm

A Guinea worm is a parasite that enters the human body in contaminated drinking water, then it grows for almost a year and emerges through a burning blister in the skin. Symptoms begin just before the worm starts to emerge from the blister. Victims suffer intense pain, often accompanied by bacterial infection and the inability to walk. As of today, there is no medication to help with Guinea worm but if you allow the worm to wrap around a stick it can help with the extraction process. Guinea worm disease is on track to become the second human disease, and the first parasitic disease, to be eradicated. It’s becoming eradicated because community-based interventions are taking place where people are being educated on filtering water to reject the parasite from entering the water systems and by keeping anyone who has an emerging worm from entering any water source.

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What makes a disease easier to eradicate

Copy: There are five very important causes that play a part in making a disease easy to eradicate. Things to consider include:

  • If the disease is caused by a small number of pathogens 
  • The disease only has one host 
  • The disease is visible and has good diagnostics
  • Elimination has already proven to be possible
  • The perceived disease burden is high and financial, political and community support is available.

While these factors make the eradication process a lot easier, it doesn’t mean it’s impossible to eradicate other diseases. These steps will make it easier to work towards global disease eradication.

How to prevent the spread of a disease

//Copy: There are many precautions people can take when they are coming down with an illness that they may view as potentially more harmful than the general cold, when going to a foreign country, especially in these uncertain times you need to do research on the country you’re going to and what to be aware of when you’re out there to prepare for any precautions that need to be taken against any foreign viruses that may cause trouble to you or your family, here are five of the most common precautions that you may want to take:

Wash and dry your hands regularly and well.


//Copy: Making sure you clean your hands thoroughly goes a long way in preventing the transmission of diseases. We touch our food, drinks, and surfaces that can be contaminated. So it’s important that we thoroughly clean our hands with soap for a minimum of 20 seconds – cleaning individual fingers thoroughly.

Clean surfaces regularly

//Copy: Surfaces build up bacteria every minute of every day so it is important you don’t let that build up which can carry diseases. It’s recommended that you clean to remove bacteria and build-up of dirt to recuse the migration of germs from surface to human. The best practices to clean surfaces would be water and soap or a multi-surface spray tool if there are shops nearby to where you are staying during your visit, as they kill off any germs and then thoroughly wipe over the surface where you applied the spray.

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Cover coughs and sneezes

//Copy: An uncovered sneeze or cough can send infected droplets up to six feet away and remain airborne for several hours. The liver disease can also stay on the surface for 48 hours. So it is important that you cover your face with your elbows or hands when sneezing or coughing. If you cover it with your hands you will need to clean them straight away with hand sanitiser, or soap and water.

Prepare food safely

//Copy: Make sure that your hands are clean and all your food is in-date and washed. This, as well as your equipment, will help you be on track for making a safely prepared meal without the risk of any food-borne diseases, or any carried on by the food you are cooking. You don’t know who has touched it before, so cleaning the food is the best option to reduce the risk of spreading the disease.

Ventilate your home

Ventilating the air inside condensed areas where lots of people pass through is key to disease prevention and eventual disease eradication. This is because the fresh, filtered air coming through replaces and kills off all of the airborne diseases. Not many modern houses come with full house ventilation and can cost upwards of £1,000 if you want a high-level system that carries its full purpose and nothing less.

Summary

If you follow these steps, you will play a part in the eradication of diseases. Over time, using these steps the cases of certain diseases and viruses will decrease significantly as we saw in the case of poliovirus. Some of these precautions won’t be able to take place in some lower-income countries, because they are unable to buy the equipment needed for the precautions to take place, which is why the rate of the diseases is so high in these countries and why WHO is targeting the diseases here.

The world is taking step by step actions in eradicating diseases, everyone has a part to play even if it’s the little things in everyday life that you need to do like washing hands and regular cleaning. Not every health issue can be eradicated but there can be a big increase in eradicated diseases in the future and we can all work towards global disease elimination.


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Bilal

Bilal Is a Blogger and an SEO professional. Founder of dsnews.co.uk & includedmoney.com & mywebmagazine.co.uk , I have 2 years of experience in SEO & 1 year of Successful blogging @ dsnews.co.uk. I have a passion for SEO & Blogging, Affiliate marketer & also interested to invest on profitable stocks.