Examples of Communicable Diseases -Though there are number of new disease that have become matter of concern for the health care providers, communicable disease still remains the major killer among the poor. Various studies suggest that diseases like diarrhoea, TB, upper respiratory infections among children, maternal mortality are the major causes of death. National Health and Family Survey (NHFS II) also show that communicable diseases are major killers among poor, for example Tuberculosis
Examples of Communicable Diseases – Diarrhoea
The health problems that occur among those belonging to the lower socio-economic strata of the society living in most subhuman conditions are in fact related to their basic survival. Malnutrition and lack of potable drinking water are often manifested in gastroenteritis and diarrhoea, leading to higher mortality among children. . A majority of these deaths are preventable caused by dehydration and are linked to malnutrition.
SEE ALSO : Sickness meaning of Patient
Apart from major pathogens causing the disease, multiple socio-economic and climatic factors contribute to the high magnitude of the disease including safe water supply; poor hygiene and sanitation, literacy, drought, floods and inadequate treatment of the disease, particularly withholding of food and liquid. Susceptibility to diseases, particularly diseases of the digestive system and to infections as a result of unsafe drinking water, poor sanitation and unhygienic living conditions are equally important determinants contributing to what is called ‘nutrition leakage’. Interestingly, the human body has been compared to a leaking nutrition bucket, wherein poor society, nutrition is sometimes drained away faster from the human body than it is possible to pour. The holes in the bucket are not only inadequate food, education and information, lack of immunization, weaning diarrhoea, infections, intestinal and parasitic diseases, lack of preventive health care etc. All these problems are clear manifestations of poverty and underdevelopment, and therefore must be viewed both as a cause and consequence of low socio-economic status and social inequality.
These social inequalities are glaringly visible when we look at the cycle of undernutrition given below. Several studies show that the problem of malnutrition among girls and women are much greater than their male counterparts. Further, it is a well established fact that infections further impair the nutritional status of these people by altering absorption and metabolism and through the excretion of nutrients in the case of diarrhoea and vomiting.
Examples of Communicable Diseases – Tuberculosis
A wider understanding of the cases of ill-health reveals that disease like TB is a problem of human suffering most prevalent among the impoverished and exploited segments of the society. These root causes, as we know, are embedded in the lower strata of the society who failed to give early symptoms of the disease any importance at all. TB is a problem especially among the rural poor and urban slum dwellers mainly because:
a) people get diagnosed late
b) lack of awareness that children can also get TB
c) irregular intake of extensive medicines
d) undernutrition resulting in malnourishment
e) lack of adequate rest
f) irregularity in treatment due to migration
g) problems related to employment.
The reasons are varied and poor nutritional status, poor living conditions, low utilization of health services, unemployment adds to the problem. Diseases of skin, eye and ears, diarrhoea and dysentery have shown a higher incidence in the lower classes ascribed to the poor state of physical environment in which they live.
