What are air borne diseases examples?

Airborne diseases are spread through coughing, sneezing, laughing and close personal contact. Contact Diseases are transmitted when a person with the disease has direct bodily contact with a person who does not have the disease, and the microbe is passed from one to the other.

Prevention

Currently, prevention of new cases is based on following appropriate infection control measures. Recommendations for precautions include:

• Wash your hands often,
• Cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze (use the bend of your elbow, instead of your hands, or a tissue),
• Avoid close contact (i.e. kissing, hugging, sharing eating utensils or cups) with people who are sick, and when you are sick,
• Clean and disinfect regularly touched surfaces (doorknobs, countertops, toys, etc.), especially if someone is sick, and
• Stay home when you are sick.

Airborne Diseases - Cause and Spread

Airborne diseases are caused by pathogenic microbes small enough to be discharged from an infected person via:

• Coughing,
• Sneezing,
• Laughing,
• Close personal contact, and
• Aerosolization of the microbe (through sneezing, coughing, etc.).

The microbes remain suspended in the air on dust particles, respiratory and water droplets.

Illness is caused when the microbe is inhaled, contacts the mucus membranes or when the secretions remain on a surface are touched.  

Transmission of airborne diseases can be greatly reduced when implementing these efforts:

• Practice social and respiratory manners (covering your mouth/nose when coughing/sneezing, etc.),
• Stay home when ill,
• Limit close contact with an ill person,
• Allow a few feet of space between you and others while ill,
• Wear a mask,
• Cover coughs and sneezes with your elbow or a tissue can greatly reduce the spread of the diseases,
• Good hand washing can decrease the spread of the diseases, that could be picked up on hands from surfaces or hand contact with secretions, and
• Environmental controls and engineering alternatives help reduce transmission of water droplet aerosolized pathogens.

Contact Diseases - Cause and Spread

Contact Diseases are spread when a person with the disease has direct bodily contact with a person without the disease, and the microbe is passed from one to the other.

Contact diseases can also be spread by indirect contact with the personal items of a person with the disease, or in their environment.

The presence of wound drainage or other discharges from the body pose a potential increased risk of spreading the disease and contaminating the environment.

Taking safeguards that create a barrier as well as routines that decrease or prevent the microbe in the environment or on personal items, can aid in preventing the spread of direct contact diseases.

Transmission-Based Precautions

What Healthcare Providers can do to protect themselves

Transmission-Based Precautions are the second tier of basic infection control and are to be used in addition to Standard Precautions for patients who may be ill with certain infectious agents for which additional precautions are needed to prevent the spread/transmission of the disease.
 

Guideline for Isolation Precautions

• Isolation Precautions

  • Learn about the correct PPE healthcare staff should be wearing when caring for those on transmission based precautions.

• Contact Precautions

• Droplet Precautions

• Airborne Precautions

• Example Signs (Posters)

  •  

By Medicover Hospitals / 10 Aug 2021 Home | Articles | Air-Borne Disease

Article Context:

1. Types of Air-borne Disease
2. Symptoms
3. Prevention
4. Treatment
5. Frequently Asked Questions

Types of Air-borne Disease

• Influenza: We all face cough or cold (flu), at least once in our lives. This flu starts affecting us even before there are any visible symptoms. It spreads throughout the body and weakens the immune system. As there are multiple forms of flu and they can evolve, it becomes difficult to identify them and provide vaccinations for such diseases.
• Common Cold: It is the most common type of air-borne disease. Everyone is susceptible to catch cold many times in their life. In the US, every year there are more than a million cases of the common cold. The most common virus responsible for the cold in the US is the rhinovirus.
• Mumps: These are highly infectious and are prone to spread before you can understand the symptoms. It takes 5 days or more for symptoms to show. With the available vaccination, the spread of mumps has been controlled largely. Its spread is now limited among people living in congested areas.
• Chicken Pox: Chicken Pox spreads through the Varicella-Zoster virus. The symptoms appear after 21 days with rashes, such viral infection mostly happens only once to everyone in a lifetime. Due to certain reactions, it may develop again in the form of shingles. These are very painful. It can also cause chickenpox to someone, who has never had chickenpox.
• Measles: Another highly communicable disease whose virus keeps suspending in the air or sits on contaminated surfaces for hours is measles. It can infect a healthy person before or after four days of the occurrence of rashes. A total of 140,000 people died due to measles in 2018. It is also one of the crucial reasons for the death of kids across the world. The vaccine available for measles has saved more than 23 million people from 2000 to 2018. In 2019, there were about 1300 cases of measles in the US. It was observed that the infected people were the ones without vaccinations.
• Tuberculosis: It is a kind of disease that spreads through bacteria. It is a communicable disease. It is seen that one can get infected with TB without feeling sick or spreading it to others. Out of 1.4 billion TB cases across the world, the active cases are only 10 million. People with a weak immune system are at a high risk of getting infected due to TB. The symptoms for TB are visible either within a couple of days or may take even months or years in certain cases. As soon as a person gets infected, the bacteria starts to spread and destroy the immune system and lungs. Then it moves to various body organs through the blood vessels or lymph nodes.
• Whooping Cough: Also known as Pertussis, whooping cough enlarges the air ducts and transforms into a deadly cough. It is highly infective in the first couple of weeks of cough. Every year, there are 24 million cases of pertussis and about 160,700 dying of it.
• Diphtheria: It attacks the esophagus and the lungs. Also, it can cause harm to the nervous system, kidneys, and, heart. It is also known to spread majorly in kids and cause death. Due to the invention of the vaccine, it has become a rare disease. There have been less than 5 reported cases of diphtheria in more than a decade. The last reported cases of diphtheria were in 2016 (7,100 cases).
• COVID 19: There has been a rapid growth in the spread of novel coronavirus. After the first case appeared in China in 2019, it soon became a pandemic affecting the entire world. It is also a kind of evolving air-borne disease that mutates with time. Even scientists are still trying to understand its behavior. Every day there seems to be new information regarding its symptoms. The common symptoms are dry cough, high body temperature, fatigue, and difficulty in breathing.

Symptoms

• Cough
• Cold
• Running nose
• Chest congestion
• Sinus
• Headache
• Body aches
• Loss of strength
• Stuffy throat
• Tremors
• High body temperature

Treatment

• Symptom Management: Through regular medication, the spread of airborne disease is controlled somehow. Common cold medicines are mostly used to treat these diseases.
• Rest: Long and proper rest effectively helps to recover from these air-borne diseases.
• Hospitalization: In certain scenarios when the disease becomes life-threatening, only proper hospitalization is the option. This happens mostly in the case of COVID – 19 or Pertussis.

Prevention:

• Vaccination: Vaccines are the most important preventive measure to safeguard oneself from getting infected. Currently, there are vaccinations available for diseases like Measles, Mumps, Chicken Pox, and Flu.
• Hygiene: Personal and social hygiene is very important. It decreases the spread of these air-borne diseases. Maintain a safe distance in public, wear face masks, and use tissues or handkerchiefs while sneezing or coughing.
• Ventilation: With good ventilation, airborne diseases can be prevented from spreading to a lot of people. All the hospitals have high-quality ventilation, today. This can also be effective for residential buildings.

Which one is most common air borne disease?

What is meant by air borne disease give 2 examples *?