Transmissible transmission of infection

Most diseases do not appear just like that, but are transmitted from the outbreak to a healthy person. We suggest that you familiarize yourself with the types of transmission of infections, as well as understand in more detail in vector-borne diseases. This is especially true in the warm season.

Types of Transmission

Infection can be transmitted to humans in the following ways:

1. Alimentary. The route of transmission is the digestive system. The infection enters the body with food and water containing pathogens (for example, intestinal infections, dysentery, salmonellosis, cholera).
2. Airborne. Transmission route - inhaled air or dust containing the pathogen.
3. Contact. Route of transmission is the source of infection or illness (for example, a sick person). You can get infected by direct contact, sexually, as well as contact household, that is, through the use of household items common with the infected (for example, a towel or dishes).
4. Blood:

• vertical, during which the mother’s disease passes through the placenta to the baby;
• vector-borne transmission of the disease - infection through the blood with the help of live carriers (insects);
• blood transfusion, when infection occurs through insufficiently processed instruments in the dental office, various medical institutions (hospitals, laboratories, and so on), beauty salons and hairdressers.

Transmissive transmission method

The vector of transmission is the ingestion of contaminated blood containing the causative agent of the infection into the blood of a healthy person. It is carried out by living carriers. The transmissible path involves the transmission of pathogens using blood-sucking insects :

• directly with an insect bite;
• after rubbing on the skin with damage (for example, with scratches) of the killed insect vector.

Without proper treatment, vector-borne diseases can be fatal.

Methods of transmission and classification of carriers of vector-borne diseases

The vector-borne transmission of the disease occurs in the following ways:

1. Inoculation - a healthy person becomes infected during an insect bite through his oral apparatus. Such transmission will occur several times if the carrier does not die (for example, malaria spreads this way).
2. Contamination - a person becomes infected by rubbing insect feces in a bitten place. Infection can also be repeated many times, up to the death of the carrier (an example of the disease is typhus).
3. Specific contamination - the infection of a healthy person occurs when an insect is rubbed into damaged skin (for example, when it has scratches or wounds). Transmission occurs once, as the carrier dies (an example of the disease is relapsing fever).

Carriers, in turn, are divided into the following types:

• Specific, in the body of which pathogens undergo development and have several stages of life.
• Mechanical, in whose body pathogens do not undergo development, but only accumulate over time.

Types of diseases that are transmitted by a vector-borne method

Possible infections and diseases that are infected by insects:

• relapsing fever;
• anthrax;
• tularemia;
• plague;
• encephalitis;
• AIDS virus;
• Chagas disease, or American trypanosomiasis;
• yellow fever (tropic viral disease);
• various types of fevers;
• Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever (a high percentage of deaths - from ten to forty percent);
• dengue fever (characteristic of the tropics);
• lymphatic filariasis (characteristic of the tropics);
• river blindness, or onchocerciasis, and many other diseases.

In total, there are about two hundred types of diseases that are transmitted by a vector-borne transmission.

Specific carriers of vector-borne diseases

We wrote above that there are two types of carriers. Consider those in whose organisms pathogens multiply or undergo a developmental cycle.

Mechanical carriers of vector-borne infections

These insects transmit the pathogen in the form in which it was received.

Human Immunodeficiency Virus Transmission

The number of infectious units in one milliliter of HIV-infected blood is up to three thousand. This is three hundred times more than in seminal fluid. The human immunodeficiency virus is spread in the following ways:

• sexually;
• from a pregnant or nursing mother to a baby;
• through blood (injection drugs; during transfusion of infected blood or transplantation of tissues and organs from an HIV-infected person);

A vector-borne transmission of HIV is almost impossible.

Prevention of vector-borne infections

Preventive measures to prevent transmission of vector-borne infections:

• deratization, that is, the fight against rodents;
• pest control, that is, a set of measures for the destruction of carriers;
• a set of procedures for improving the terrain (for example, land reclamation);
• the use of individual or collective methods of protection against bloodsucking insects (for example, special bracelets soaked in aromatic oils, repellents, sprays, mosquito nets);
• immunization activities;
• placement of sick and infected in quarantine zone.

The main goal of preventive measures is to reduce the number of possible carriers. This alone can reduce the likelihood of contracting diseases such as typhoid fever, transmissible anthroponoses, phlebotomic fever and urban skin leishmaniasis.

The scope of preventive work depends on the number of infected and the characteristics of infections. Thus, they can be carried out within:

• streets;
• district;
• cities;
• areas and the like.

The success of preventive measures depends on the thoroughness of the work and the level of examination of the source of infection. We wish you good health!