Healthyvives Health Blog

Prevention is better than cure and this is the especially true for the prevention of infection in health care set ups. Three categories of people who are at risk of infection from services delivery practices. They are clients or patients, health personnel and community members. It is important to prevent transmission of infection at all times, including during the provision of contraceptive services, childbirth, newborn care, post-natal care, immunization, post abortion care etc.
Micro-organisms are the causative agents of infection. They include bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites. Bacteria can be further divided into three categories for the purpose of infection prevention. They are vegetative,(staphylococcal) mycobacteria,(tuberculosis) endospores(tetanus) .
Protective barriers are the barriers between the host and the micro-organisms. Protective barriers may be physical, chemical, or mechanical processes which help to prevent the spread of infectious micro-organisms from clients or patients, health personnel or from health personnel to clients or patients due to lack of infection prevention practices or from the contaminated instruments equipment or linens etc.
Aseptic technique or asepsis is the combination of efforts made to prevent the entry of micro-organisms into an area of body where they are likely to cause infection. The goal of asepsis is to reduce or eliminate the number of the micro-organisms on both animate surface and inanimate objects to a safe level.
Antisepsis is the prevention of infection by killing or by inhibiting the growth of micro-organisms on the skin and other body tissues.
Decontamination is the process that makes inanimate objects safer to be handled by staff especially cleaning personnel before cleaning. Such objects include large surfaces e.g. pelvic examination tables, OT tables and surgical instruments and gloves contaminated with blood or body fluids during or after surgical procedures or examination or therapeutic procedures.
Cleaning is the process that physically removes all visible blood, body fluids or any other foreign materials such as dust or soil from skin or inanimate objects.
Disinfection is the process that eliminates most but not all disease causing micro-organisms from inanimate objects. High level disinfecting, through boiling or use of the chemicals, eliminates all micro-organisms except some of the bacterial endospores like tetanus spores.
Sterilization is the process that eliminates all the micro-organisms including bacterial endospores.
Reservoir is a place where the micro-organism lives e.g. air, soil, water, animals, plants or on humans.
Susceptible host is person who can become infected.
Micro-organisms live everywhere in our environment. Individuals normally carry them on their skin, respiratory, intestinal and genital tracts. These micro-organisms are known as normal flora. In addition micro-organisms live in animals, soil, air, plants and water. Some organisms are more pathogenic than others, i.e. they are more likely to cause the disease. Given the right circumstances all micro-organisms may cause infection. Bacteria, viruses and other agents survive and spread within the community due to the presence of certain favorable factors or conditions.

Increase of body temperature is generally called fever. Fever is a common disease for human being. Acute fever is also a common symptom of many diseases which may be simple or serious. Causes of Fever may be viral which may be subsiding without any treatment. A large number of children it may be a symptom of an acute severe illness. We can observe fever like this, within two month child fever is severe disease. Symptom may come out like as unconsciousness or drowsy, convulsion and unable to take food or water. If found following symptom during fever then its may be malaria, symptom are like as no cough or running nose, no rash, no ear discharge, no diarrhea, no sign of in obvious infection, fever more than five days.
Malaria is transmitted by female Anopheline Mosquitoes
Signs and symptoms of Malaria are like; patients get chills or shivering for half hours followed by high fever for 8 to 12 hours. The fever comes on sometimes daily or alternate days; during fever its seen Headache, body ache and vomiting. Fever comes down after profuse sweating. It the malaria is not treated than it causes, enlarged spleen, Anaemia, weakness and by malarial parasite affects the brain, the cerebral malaria may lead to unconsciousness. But above signs symptoms it may differ and absent in young infants. In young infants all fever with chill is not malaria. Malaria fever may be associated with respiratory or gastro intestinal symptoms. So fever should be diagnosed as to find out malaria or viral fever. As to find out malaria blood smear examination should be done. But a serious case of malaria signs symptoms are like as- 103ºf or above temperature or Hyperpyrexia, convulsions or twitching of limbs or other body muscles, blurring or irregular movement of eye balls or change in vision, delirium or incoherent speech, coma or semi- consciousness. Diagnosis of malaria cannot be confirmed on clinical signs and symptoms only it should be confirmed by microscopic examination of blood. Thick and thin blood smears are collected for microscopic examination of malaria. Old malaria infection may flare up during any other illness like after childbirth, surgery, and accidents as well as in patients suffering from other infections. Chloroquine phosphate is the treatment of malaria but we must consult with doctors.
How can we control malaria?
We can control malaria to avoid mosquito bites. To avoid from mosquito bites we can use nets at night, use mosquito repellants, we can spray houses With DDT.
Malaria is a very dangerous for human beings. Malaria is transmitted by Female Anopheline Mosquitoes which are mostly found in forest site but somewhere it found in urban arrears also. Our first duty about malaria is to save ourselves from malaria and if anybody attacked by malaria than we have to proper diagnosis for malaria with blood smears which is done by microscopic examination of blood.

How infectious diseases are passed one person to another in various ways, this very important question. And these diseases are caused by micro organism and worms. Some of them are tuberculosis, malaria, chicken fox and cholera. But human skin and blood fight against germs to prevent such kind of disease. First of all, the skin and the mucous membranes of our body help us to keep out germs. There are glands in the skin, which produce oily substances to provide a protective cover to the surface to the skin. Perspiration helps us to eliminate certain wastes and germs out of the skin; perspiration also contains a special chemical known as lysozyme which destroys germs. Lysoxyme is also found in tears, saliva, nasal secretion and tissue fluids. Many types of germs, which happen to reach our stomach, are destroyed by strongly acidic stomach juices. The germs, which gain entry into our body, reach our organs or survive in the stomach, take nourishment from our body to multiply. Then they begin to destroy our body cells and also secrete toxic or poisonous substances. Unless their activity is checked they secrete enough toxins to make us feel sick. But more often they are overpowered by our body. Our body has an elaborate defense system comparable to the defense forces of a country. This defense system is called the immune system. The defense force is in the form of special cells, called white blood cell (W.B.C), which circulate throughout the body along with blood. The W.B.C. is of various types and fights the invader in a variety of ways. During many kinds of infection, an automatic increase in their total number is triggered. The number might double, triple or quadruple depending upon the severity of infection. Therefore, doctors determine the number of W.B.C. in blood by observing drop of it under the microscope. When germs attack our body, special types of W.B.C. migrate to the infected site and destroy the invader germs by engulfing them. These cells are called engulfing cells. Interestingly, when the fight is over, other type of W.B.C. are directed to move to the site to remove dead germs and dead W.B.C. the pus that is generally present at the site of infection contains a large number of dead cells and germs. Another kind of W.B.C. produce a chemical weapon called antibodies, which attack poison or toxic substances to make them ineffective. These antibodies also tag the invader, so that the engulfing cells easily recognize it. yet another type of W.B.C. work as killer cells and directly destroy the invader or the infected body cell. Some W.B.C. which have for the first time encountered a specific invader are held in reserve as trained cells, which can work for subsequent encounter effectively. The whole body defense mechanism goes into action as soon as disease germs enter the body and cause an alarm signal to be generated. Quite often, our body is effectively able to deal with the infection and all symptoms like fever or inflammation subside by themselves, but at other times, so we can say medicine must be used to supplement the body defense mechanism for every human being.