INFECTIOUS DISEASES
Today, we are going to talk about infectious diseases. We are starting this series on specific health conditions with infections because, in our circumstances, infections are still the commonest health challenges that we face.
Infections occupy a very small space within the horizon of health conditions. In industrialized nations, they deal more with metabolic problems, cardiovascular diseases, non-infectious conditions but In our circumstances, we still have to grapple with a double load of increasing non-infectious conditions and the persisting high burden of infections. This means that health-wise, we in the developing world are suffering from double jeopardy both from infections and non-infections.
We have imbibed the white man’s culture, because we now eat very refined foods, very little natural foods while fruits and vegetables have become alien to us, we live in physical inactivity and then, of course, the African type of life whereby everybody was everybody’s keeper and that “communuality” that made it possible for us not to be in solitary confinement is giving way to the kind of sedentary and seclusive life that people in other climes live. These conditions have not in any way helped us health-wise.
The climate and poor health seeking habits are two major factors that have allowed infections to thrive in our circumstances. For example, the hot weather and the humid weather during the rainy season all allow infections to thrive and when there is a population that is ill-equipped to resist these infections, the outcome will always be fatal.
Any health facility you go to, the most frequent cause of attendance is malaria followed by typhoid, what then is malaria?
Malaria is an infectious disease. It is caused by a specific organism that is transmitted by mosquitoes. There is hardly any part in this country where we do not have mosquitoes.
When mosquitoes bite somebody who has malaria parasite in his/her bloodstream, the mosquito will first produce some liquid to make sure that the blood it is going to suck, does not clot and as it starts to suck the blood, it sucks in the parasite that is already in the bloodstream of the person, so the parasite goes down into the stomach of the mosquito.
Now, when it goes to bite another person who doesn’t have malaria, it pushes out the content of its stomach into the system of the other person in order not to make the blood clot, the parasites that are already in the stomach of the mosquito is now transferred into the bloodstream of this other person that does not have the parasite thereby transferring the malaria to the person who didn’t have it before and that way the cycle continues.
