World Health Organization Ebola and Leishmaniasis - Essay Example

Full Full Submitted: World Health Organization Ebola and Leishmaniasis Ebola and leishmaniasis are bothinfectious/communicable diseases like Hepatitis B, infecting people worldwide. Most prevalent but more widespread is the Hepatitid B, which is infecting more or less 2B people worldwide, mostly in China and other parts of Asia and killing around 600,000 people annually (WHO, Hepatitis B, sec. 1, 4); more prevalent but most widespread is the Leishmaniasis, which is threatening more or less 350 million adults and children in 88 countries and currently infecting as many as 12 million people at a rate of 1-2 million new cases annually (WHO, Leishmaniasis, sec. 2, par. 2); least prevalent and least widespread is the Ebola, which since its discovery in 1976, has registered 1850 number of cases with 1200 deaths in Africa (Congo, Sudan, Uganda, Gabon), America (Virginia, Texas, and Pennsylvania) and Italy (WHO, Ebola haemorrhagic fever, sec. 8).These diseases are all acquired in an unclean environment, as they are caused either by bacteria, viruses, or parasites which live in unclean surroundings and thrive on humans and animals in order to reproduce (Zamora, par. 1). The causing organism for Ebola is ebola virus (WHO, Ebola haemorrhagic fever, sec. 1, par. 3), for Hepatitis B is hepatitis B virus (WHO, Hepatitis B, sec. 1, par. 1), and leishmaniasis is a protozoan parasite belonging to leishmania (WHO, Leishmaniasis, sec. 1, par. 2).

These diseases spread easily primarily through person-to-person mode: Direct contact with the infected person’s blood, body fluids and secretions through unsafe injection practices, blood transfusion, sexual contact, and close interpersonal contact in the case of childhood infections. (WHO, Ebola haemorrhagic fever, sec. 5-6; WHO, Hepatitis B, sec. 5) These diseases are preventable by reducing harmful levels of these micro-organisms around the environment simply by having a clean environment to deny them a place to thrive in and by practising clean hygiene and sterilization to avoid transmission.

However once infected, these infectious diseases are all dangerously harmful, especially so that except for Hepatitis B, there are no vaccines yet for Ebola and Leishmaniasis; worst, except for Leishmaniasis which can be treated with medicines called antimony-containing compounds (Dugdale, par. 9-10) and chronic Hepatitis B which can be treated with drugs, there are no specific treatment yet for Ebola and acute Hepatitis B (WHO, Ebola haemorrhagic fever, sec. 5, par. 2; WHO, Hepatitis B, sec. 6). Works CitedDugdale, David C.

Leishmaniasis. The New York Times on the Web. 10 June 2011. 10 June 2011 .World Health Organization. Hepatitis B. Fact sheet N°204. August 2008. WHO Media Center. 10 June 2011 .World Health Organization. Ebola haemorrhagic fever . Fact sheet N°103. December 2008. WHO Media Center. 9 June 201 < http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/index.html>.World Health Organization. Leishmaniasis. 2011. WHO Media Center. 9 June 2011 .Zamora, Antonio. Hygiene – Viruses, bacteria, and Parasites. 2011. Scientific Psychic.

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