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Medical Anthroplogy

Disease Vectors

The spread of contagious diseases is not always as simple as someone coughing on another person.

There may be intermediate hosts and/or disease transmitting organisms. The latter are referred to as disease vectors.

Mosquitoes, fleas, lice, ticks, flies, and even some snails are common disease vectors. Plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Its normal host is wild rodents and other small mammals.

However, it can be spread to people by fleas that suck blood from those animals and transmit it to humans when they extract their blood.

Once an epidemic of the plague begins, fleas can easily spread the disease from one human host to another.

Flies are known to carry bacteria on their legs from feces to food. This is one of the ways in which bacterial dysentery is spread.

Close to half of the people in the world today have chronic diseases that are vector-borne. The tropical and subtropical regions are the most effected. In third world nations, vector-borne diseases cause high levels of physical disability and low life expectancies.


433 posted on 09/10/2005 6:56:50 PM PDT by _Jim (Listening 28.400 MHz USB most every day now ...)
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To: _Jim

Do you ever go outside?


434 posted on 09/10/2005 6:59:42 PM PDT by Modok
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To: _Jim

You must show relevance. Simple posting of data is meaningless. You must be able to show that these people can never live for a few weeks, or a month more/whatever w/o dying. You must show cause and effect, not imply it. Everything you posted refers to things that exist w/o the flood being present. There's more water outside the flood area, than in it.


437 posted on 09/10/2005 7:04:50 PM PDT by spunkets
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