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Infectious Diseases
Infectious DiseasesInfectious diseases are different from noninfectious diseases because a transmission process (contagion) determines who becomes ill. Contagion can occur through waterborne, foodborne, airborne, or vectorborne transmission. Sustainability brings a more holistic view of infectious diseases than simply a triangle of Agent, Host, and Environment. It understands that social policy, for instance, between environment and host may reduce infection rates and includes better nutrition, hygiene, preventative treatment, and housing (e.g. TB, HIV/AIDS, diarrheal diseases, acute respiratory infections). It investigates the life cycle and ecology of disease agents (e.g. cholera, hantaviral disease, hookworm, schistosomiasis), and understands the centrality of environmental disruption (e.g. rabies, Lyme disease, malaria, cryptosporidiosis). Sustainability works to improve both human and natural environmental conditions as part of its management of infectious disease. |
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Keywords contagion, host organism, host habitat, disease agent, disease vector, disease reservoir, environmental disruption, sanitation, exposure, hygiene, nutrition, housing conditions, shantytowns, pathogens, immune responses, host specificity, tissue responses, public health, preventative treatment, disease transmission, herd immunity, anthroponotic diseases, zoonotic diseases, emerging disease, vaccine, human ecology, resistance to treatment, environmental health |
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