Preview

Cholera

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1424 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Cholera
Although cholera is not a new disease, it still has the potential to devastate human populations. Discuss the biology of cholera and the significance of recent epidemics.

Cholera is a human intestinal disease caused by a Gram-negative bacterium called Vibrio cholerae that has the potential to devastate human populations (Acar et al. 2003; Joachim and Karl 2002). This bacterium belongs to the Vibronaceae family with a cylinder rod shape and it is highly motile (Joachim and Karl 2002; Garcia and Valdespino 2011). This disease causes the infected host to have watery diarrhoea and vomiting that could cause dehydration and could lead to the death of the host if left untreated in time (Morillon and Garnotel 2004). This bacterium had caused seven serious global pandemic. The longest period of pandemic and the most widespread of cholera geographically is the seventh pandemic (Claire et al. 2004). It lasted from year 1961 to 1991 affecting countries like America, Indonesia and Africa (Claire et al. 2004). Underdeveloped countries like Africa, Bangladesh and India have higher possibility of having pandemic of cholera due to the lack of sanitary problem and health education (Claire et al. 2004). It is less serious in developed countries like America, Japan, China and France as proper education is provided and clean supply of food and water is given to the living community (Claire et al. 2004). Even though in recent years epidemics of cholera have lessened down, occasionally occurrence of cholera epidemic may come about (Alen et al. 2011). Thus, it still poses as a big threat towards the community wellbeing.

Cholera is often transmitted by the ingestion of contaminated water and food mainly seafood such as shellfish, prawns, crab and oysters (Acar et al. 2003). Planktons in the water sometimes contain the Vibrio Cholerae bacteria and sea creatures that ingest them would have the bacteria that will be passed to the community as a source of food (Morillon and Garnotel



References: 1) Acar J, Steffen R, Walker E, Zuckerman J (2003) Cholera: assessing the risk to travellers and identifying methods of protection. Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease 1, No.2, Pp.80-88 2) Alen A, Elsa S, Holly G, Matthias KG, Renee KF (2011) An age-structured model for the spread of epidemic cholera: Analysis and simulation. Nonlinear Analysis: Real World Applications 12, No.6, Pp.3483-3498. 3) Brian K, Christophe LM, Claire J. O, Claudia R, Daniel DM, Erkang F, Ethan AM, Jason CP, Konstantin K, Mark AR, Wim GJ, Xiao-Jian T, Zhongsheng Z, (2004) Structural biology and structure-based inhibitor design of cholera toxin and heat-labile enterotoxin. International Journal of Medical Microbiology 294, No.4, Pp. 217–223. 4) Chandrabali G, Edward TR, Stephen BC (2009) Chapter 45- Cholera. Vaccines for Biodefense and Emerging and Neglected Diseases, Pp.869-889. 5) Claire LC, Eliaser J, Hitoshi O, Jean PC, Mary LH, Michael JO, Philippe Calain (2004) Can oral cholera vaccination play a role in controlling a cholera outbreak?. Vaccine 22, No.19, Pp.2444-2451. 6) Fotedar R (2001) Vector potential of houseflies (Musca domestica) in the transmission of Vibrio cholera in India. Acta Tropica 78, Pp.31-34. 7) Garcia LG, Valdespino JL (2011) Cholera: Environmental Risk Factors. Encyclopedia of Environmental Health. Pp.641-649. 8) Joachim R, Karl EK (2002) Vibrio cholerae and cholera: out of the water and into the host. FEMS Microbiology Reviews 26, No.2, Pp.125-139. 9) Morillon M, Garnotel E (2004) Cholera. EMC – Infectious Diseases 1, No.2, Pp.67-80 10) Morris JG (2008) Cholera and Other Vibrioses. International Encyclopedia of Public Health, Pp.683-692.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    - Cholera: an acute and often fatal intestinal disease that produces severe gastrointestinal symptoms and is…

    • 1235 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Source 16 claims that strong and healthy individuals are falling ill very suddenly leading to their deaths, which ‘will shake the firmest nerves and inspire fear in the strongest heart’. This suggests that the shocking impact of cholera did cause progress in public health. The 1832 cholera epidemic had a huge impact due to the 32,000 people who died. This coupled with its speed to spread and strike people caused the government to bring in new legislations. This is shown when the Board of Health was set up to make sure local boards of health were set up to inspect food, clothing and overall hygiene of the poor. However although many cities took advice on board and set up boards of health, knowledge into causes of cholera was still unknown so many measures tended to be a rather hit or miss affair. However since the government did take action shows they were willing to improve public health provision. However Source 16 only refers to the 1832 cholera epidemic. Although there were three more cholera epidemics after 1832 and deaths peaked at 62,000 in 1848, the impact of cholera seemed to reduce due to not only the decrease in deaths (14,000 by 1866) but also because of increase scientific knowledge in causes of cholera, such as when John Snow made the link between bad water and cholera in his Soho investigation where many deaths occurred with those next…

    • 1193 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    MI 1.4.3

    • 1016 Words
    • 5 Pages

    -Cholera has been able to be eliminated through the promotion of safe water, better hygiene, proper fecal disposal, well cooked food. Water was one of the main ways that cholera was spread since people were disposing of their species in bodies of water. Another thing that helped was better hygiene to stop transmission by touch, cooking food better in order to eliminate bacterial contamination through consumption.…

    • 1016 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    London Cholera Outbreak

    • 759 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In reference to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cholera is defined as "An acute diarrheal illness caused by infection of the stomach and intestine with the bacterium Vibrio Cholera". Cholera can be characterized as a flu however such symptoms include diarrhea, vomiting, leg cramps, dehydration and shock. Why is the Cholera disease dangerous? Cholera is considered dangerous due to the fact that an individual can become severely dehydrated and the rapid loss of fluid that can occur over a short period of time. How does an individual get cholera? "A person can get cholera by drinking water or eating food contaminated with the cholera bacterium". With further research into the mapping of the 1854 London Cholera Outbreak,…

    • 759 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    On the Discovery Trail with Epidemiologists of the Past John Snow and the Cholera Outbreak of the 1840s, Question 1-4 Cholera is a severe diarrhoeal disease that can kill within only a matter of hours if left untreated. During the 19th Century, there was an immense epidemic of Cholera that effected London, which killed thousands of people. Q1) Dr. John Snow was a British physician who found the reason as to why there was an outbreak of Cholera.…

    • 1276 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Weaknesses: This isn’t accurate because not everyone would have said if they had cholera or not. So it wouldn’t be accurate.…

    • 5563 Words
    • 23 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Ghost Map

    • 1801 Words
    • 8 Pages

    In the summer of 1854, London was coming out as one of the most modern cities in the world. With nearly 2.4 million people living in the area at the time, the city’s infrastructure itself was having a hard time providing for the basic needs of its residents. The biggest problem existing within the city at that time was its waste removal system, or for better terms, its lack of one. Human waste was piling up everywhere, from people houses to the rivers and drinking water. This situation was the perfect breeding conditions for a number of diseases, and towards the end of that summer, one of the most deadly of them all took over. It took the work of both a physician and a local minister in order to discover the mysterious cause of the extremely deadly Cholera outbreak, but by then hundreds of people had already lost their lives.…

    • 1801 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Blue Death Questions

    • 1689 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The miasma model of disease proposed that the cause for cholera was caused and spread from person to person through bad vapors or gases in the air.…

    • 1689 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    An Infectious Cure

    • 1413 Words
    • 5 Pages

    1. The Europeans poured have poured something into the water which sterilized the water and killed the toxins that become disruptive in the digestive system when they are consumed. They Europeans may have poured what are called oral rehydration salts into the well, which quickly works are combatting the cholera, and will prevent further outbreaks from occurring.…

    • 1413 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Best Essays

    Cholera In Haiti

    • 3012 Words
    • 13 Pages

    It is caused by the gram-negative bacterium, Vibrio cholerae that is a non-spore forming, curved rod that is oxidase positive (Chin et al., 2011). Vibrio cholerae has a type of semi-rigid cell wall that is peptidoglycan based which is enclosed within a capsule made of rigid accumulation and composed of gylcocalyx (Shier, Butler, & Lewis, 2011). The plasma membrane of V. cholerae is located beneath the cell wall, encloses the cytoplasm, and is made up of a phosphollipid bilayer (Shier et al., 2011). Its main function is to transport molecules in and out of the cell (Shier et al., 2011). Cholera is usually transmitted through contaminated water and if left untreated it can spread in a rapid manner (Chin et al., 2011). The Vibrio cholerae found in Haiti, is the El Tor O1 strain, which is the same strain that was identified during the Bangladesh Cholera infection in both 2002 and 2008 (Chin et al.,…

    • 3012 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    How Cholelera Changes

    • 1100 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Over the past 150 years, the United Kingdom has seen a vast change in causes of death among its people. Cholera was one of these leading causes of death in the 1800s and was a chronic illness. It was introduced to the UK from Asia in the 1830s, a spread rapidly through the towns. Cholera is an infectious disease that causes severe diarrhoea, which led to dehydration and even death. It is caused by food or water polluted with a bacterium called vibrio cholera. This disease was easily contracted and spread due to a high amount of polluted water being shared in close proximity. Poverty played a large role in the spread of cholera by influencing poor nutrition, overcrowding of towns and almost non-existent means for sanitation. Sewage systems were not in place, meaning rivers such as the Thames in London was an open…

    • 1100 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Mega Churches

    • 4020 Words
    • 17 Pages

    The latest disaster to hit Haiti, has been the cholera outbreak. The attached article addresses concerns from the United Nations, regarding mounting circumstantial evidences linking the outbreak to the U.N. Peacekeepers from Nepal. The Nepalese base housing 454 U.N. peace keepers located on a waterway called Boukan Kanni, which is a part of the Meile River. This river drains off into the Artibonite River. Haitians living in this rural area complained of the stench coming from behind the base and having spotted waste in the river. During the summer Nepal had outbreaks of cholera; the deployment to Haiti was not until October. No symptoms of the disease were evident in any of the peacekeepers, but 75% of people infected with this disease may not show symptoms and can infect persons for a period of two weeks. These implications are serious with regards to the United Nations.…

    • 4020 Words
    • 17 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Infection Control

    • 1774 Words
    • 8 Pages

    * Vector Borne Transmission - a vector is an organism that does not cause disease itself but that transmit infection by conveying pathogens from one host to another. The route of transmission is important to epidemiologists because patterns of contact vary between different populations and different groups of populations depending on socio-economic, cultural and other features (e.g. low personal and food hygiene due to the lack of clean water supply may result in increases transmission of diseases by the fetal-oral route, such as cholera. Differences in incidence of such diseases between different groups can also throw light on the routes of transmission of the disease. For example, if it is noted that polio is more common in cities in undeveloped countries, without clean water supply, than in cities with good plumbing system, we might advance the theory that polio is spread by fecal-oral route.…

    • 1774 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Every day, people come in contact with diseases. Opening a door, shaking hands, kissing, purchasing and consuming food, all require touch and involve the exchange of bacteria. Prior to inoculating people with a weakened version of diseases, the mortality rate was much higher, especially among infants. Vaccines are administered to protect the masses from diseases and outbreaks that can spread through these exchanges, such as bubonic plague. Despite staggering evidence in favor of inoculation, vaccines are a highly controversial subject- especially the vaccination of young children.…

    • 1054 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Yellow Fever

    • 782 Words
    • 4 Pages

    What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the words ‘yellow fever’? People who alters to the color yellow? An incurable disease that can cause self-destruction? Yes and no. The keyword here is ‘mosquitoes’. That’s right, tiny mosquitoes that carry a virus around to their victims. Yellow fever is only found in parts of South America and Africa with two different sequences of illness. Yellow fever has been the key to several upsetting outbreaks. The symptoms to this virus contain many unusual and unpleasant results; fortunately a prevention was developed that would give a ten year immunity from the disease. Some people’s first thought of yellow fever is where it’s origin to this virus.…

    • 782 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays