Infectious Diseases

With 2015 only a decade away, the poorest countries face enormous hurdles to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for health, let alone the broader goal of health for all their citizens (Ruxin et al, 2005:618). This is very interesting inthe sence that we are focusing on Millenium Development Goal 6 which state, 'Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases'. Severity of disease is much connencted to poverty and lack of proper education.

Summarize how to prevent malaria
Malaria is a preventable and curable disease. Malaria causes over 1 million deaths, most in children younger than 5 years and 300 to 500 million episode of acute illness each year (Ruxin et al., 2005). This disease affects more than 50% of the words population and hits tropical Africa hardest. Malaria can be prevented through different ways such as
 Use of insecticide-treated bed-nets
 Indoor residual spraying
 Intermittent presumptive treatment during pregnancy
 Early diagnosis and prompt treatment with effective anti-malarias;
 Management of the environment to control mosquitoes;
 Health education; and
 Epidemic forecasting, prevention and response.

Prevention of other infectious diseases such as Tuberculosis and HIV/Aids effectively at the global level. Tuberculosis affects poor and vulnerable populations hardest and has worsened in recent years. Tuberculosis is a leading killer of people with HIV, and up to 80% of tuberculosis patients are HIV positive in countries with high prevalence of HIV. The spread of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis highlights the global threat of poor tuberculosis control and of the failure to treat all patients properly. Tuberculosis can be prevented by educating people the causes of tuberculosis and how to control it once someone gets it and how not to spread it to others. Other method is to ensure access to high quality tuberculosis drugs or medicines for affected people. Campaigns, seminars, TV programmes, Radio programmes, magazines, posters, to mention some, can help to sensitize people on TB.


HIV/AIDS. Currently there is no vaccine for HIV/AIDS. Different ways can help to prevent people from getting this disease. Proper condoms use all the time some one having sex. Behaviour change campaign in communities, schools, workplaces, and the mass media; Harm reduction measures to limit spread in injecting drug user,
Entiretroviral protocols to reduce mother-to-child transmission; And entiretroviral therapy to reduce morbidity and prolong the lives of those who already have the virus. Above all if possible stay without doing sex, if not possible be faithful to one partner.

Summary of my thoughts
This week topic is addressing Millennium Development Goal 6 which is Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases. I found that all the disease mentioned here affect the poor people most compared to the well off group. There are inadequate/deficient supplies of almost all important essential drugs to developing countries. The problem is poverty which obstructs peoples' ability to buy the required drugs. One of the best preventive measures which across all is education, people should first get proper education on how to prevent diseases, then others follows, prevention is better than cure.

Reference:
Ruxin, J., Paluzzi, J., Wilson, P., Tosan, Y., Kruk, M. & Teklehaimanot, A. 2005. Emerging consensus in HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and access to essential medicines. (pdf) The Lancet, Vol. 365 (12), 618-621.