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Human physiology, hazards and health risks
Published in Stephen Battersby, Clay's Handbook of Environmental Health, 2023
Revati Phalkey, Naima Bradley, Alec Dobney, Virginia Murray, John O’Hagan, Mutahir Ahmad, Darren Addison, Tracy Gooding, Timothy W Gant, Emma L Marczylo, Caryn L Cox
Control and prevention is secured by improved water supply, adequate sanitation and food hygiene measures which are the basis of public and environmental health interventions to prevent and control cholera. Hygiene advice should be provided to cases and contacts. Food handlers should be excluded from work until microbiological clearance is confirmed. Safe and effective oral vaccines have been developed, but are not yet recommended for use in mass vaccination campaigns but can be used where travel takes place to areas where cholera is common and/or visiting remote places without access to medical care.
Soil
Published in Stanley E. Manahan, Environmental Chemistry, 2022
An interesting possibility for transgenic foods is to produce foods that contain vaccines against disease. This is possible because genes can be introduced into foods to produce proteins that resemble the proteins in infectious agents, causing the body to produce antibodies to such agents. Diseases for which such vaccines may be possible include cholera, hepatitis B, and various kinds of diarrhea. The leading candidate as a carrier for such vaccines is the banana. This is because children generally like bananas and this fruit is readily grown in some of the tropical regions where the need for vaccines is the greatest.
And What’s in the Pipes Will Tell
Published in Frank R. Spellman, Fundamentals of Wastewater-Based Epidemiology, 2021
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), cholera is an acute, diarrheal illness caused by infection of the intestine with the bacterium Vibrio cholera. The infection is often mild or without symptoms but sometimes can be severe. Approximately 1 in 20 infected persons have severe disease symptoms characterized by profuse watery diarrhea, vomiting, and leg cramps. In these persons, rapid loss of body fluids leads to dehydration and shock. Without treatment, death can occur within hours. Note: You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out just how deadly cholera was during the London cholera outbreak of 1854. Comparing the state of “medicine” at that time to ours is like comparing the speed potential of a horse and buggy to a state-of-the-art NASCAR race car today. Simply stated: cholera was the classic epidemic disease of the nineteenth century, as the Plague had been for the fourteenth. Its defeat reflected both common sense and progress in medical knowledge—and of the enduring changes in European and American social thought.
An approach to modelling and simulation of epidemics of diseases from pathogens spreading over water distribution systems
Published in Canadian Water Resources Journal / Revue canadienne des ressources hydriques, 2019
Bartłomiej Fajdek, Radosław Pytlak, Marcin Stachura, Tomasz Tarnawski
The paper presents an approach to building simulation models of diseases caused by pathogens spreading over water distribution systems—both due to, for example, malfunctioning of facilities ensuring water quality or deliberate actions such as terrorist attacks. The not too distant in time case of Walkerton tragedy—where the town’s water distribution system (WDS) became contaminated with bacteria E.coli due to a simple human error (O’Connor 2002)—shows that such threats are present and tangible. Nowadays, waterborne diseases still remain a serious public health concern; according to WHO estimates (Pruss-Ustun et al. 2008) they render more than 3.5 million deaths per year. In particular, cholera is one of the serious waterborne diseases, which causes diarrhea and dehydration and could lead rapidly to death, especially in populations that are impoverished or have limited access to health care (Eisenberg et al. 2013; Tuite et al. 2011).
A partially degenerate reaction–diffusion cholera model with temporal and spatial heterogeneity
Published in Applicable Analysis, 2023
Cholera is an acute diarrheal disease caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. It can be transmitted directly to humans by person-to-person contact or indirectly to humans from the environment (by ingesting water or food contaminated with Vibrio cholerae) [1,2]. Although tremendous efforts have been made to limit its spread, cholera is still a concern in countries where clean water and sanitation resources are limited to access. The last decade has witnessed many large-scale cholera outbreaks in developing countries, including Haiti (2010–2012), South Sudan (2014), and Yemen (2016–2017). It is estimated that every year, there are 1.3 to 4.0 million cases of cholera, and 21,000–143,000 deaths globally due to the infection [3].
Identification of epidemiological models: the case study of Yemen cholera outbreak
Published in Applicable Analysis, 2022
Maria Francesca Carfora, Isabella Torcicollo
Infectious diseases continue to debilitate and cause death worldwide. An important property of infectious diseases, including diseases caused by waterborne pathogens, is that these complex interactions always result from an infectious individual or environmental source transmitting the pathogen to a susceptible individual. Waterborne disease studies have a celebrated place in epidemiology and public health, with John Snow's researches, who is considered one of the fathers of modern epidemiology, in part because of his work in tracing the source of a cholera outbreak in Soho, London, in 1854. His studies inspired fundamental changes in the water and waste systems of London, which led to similar changes in other cities, and a significant improvement in general public health around the world. A small sampling of diseases in common waterborne infections includes Cholera, Giardia, Cryptosporidium, Campylobacter, Typhoid and Paratyphoid fevers, hepatitis A and E, norovirus, rotavirus and many others [1,2]; these can be caused by a variety of pathogenic microbes (bacteria, protozoa, etc.) in contaminated water. Unfortunately, waterborne diseases, mostly cholera, remain a serious public health concern today, resulting in more than 3.5 million deaths a year according to WHO estimates. Despite many clinical and theoretical studies and many efforts or interventions, cholera remains a significant threat to public health in developing countries. Cholera is an acute intestinal infection caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. Its dynamics are complicated by the multiple interactions between the human host, the pathogen and the environment, which contribute to both direct human-to-human and indirect environment-to-human transmission pathways. A deep understanding of the disease dynamics would provide important guidelines to the effective prevention and control strategies. Several different factors must be considered in attempting to understand disease dynamics, including different transmission pathways [3,4]. It is known that the qualitative model behavior is strongly influenced by the way in which the force of infection due to both indirect and direct transmission is incorporated. The propagation of diseases occurs typically through pathogen ingestion, but it is possible to acquire an infection through direct person-to-person contact. For example, cholera transmission typically occurs by the ingestion of contaminated water or food, but an outbreak in a Singapore psychiatric hospital indicated that the direct human-to-human transmission was a driving force [5]. Another example is an outbreak noted in Butabika National Mental Referral Hospital (Uganda) in October 2008 [6]. It is also discovered that the cholera outbreak in Papua, Indonesia, in 2008 was primarily caused by misconduct during funeral of a cholera victim, i.e. family members are hugging and kissing the dead body [7].