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Thursday, May 24, 2012

Epidemiology: Sex ed Essay

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Epidemiology is the branch of medicine dealing with the prevalence of diseases in large populations, epidemics.  Epidemiologists also determine the cause of the epidemic and trace how it was spread. It is one of the most important aspects of public health research, it helps bring in new policies and identifies the risk of diseases and how to prevent them. Today the major epidemiology centers are the World Health Organization ( epidemiology branch) and the Center for disease control and prevention, both of these organizations work around the world in an effort to prevent major epidemic outbursts and to aid the countries whose population is already struggling with a epidemic.

Hippocrates the famous greek physician, also known as the father of medicine, was the first epidemiologist. He is the first known person, to examine the relationship between the occurrence of the disease and its causes and how are they related to the environment. He came up with the terms pandemic, a disease found only in some places and epidemic, a disease that occurs only at some times. Later in the 16th century Girolamo Fracastoro, a Verona doctor, Proposed that diseases were spread by very small, unseeable particles that kept the disease alive. He said that they were spread by air, could multiply themselves and were destroyable only by fire. Fracastoro also wrote a book, in which he promoted personal and environmental hygiene as a way of preventing disease.


In epidemiology, an epidemic, is when new cases of a certain disease occur in a population, at a given period, the amount of cases should exceed the normal number, based on recent experience. The disease spreads quickly through the population and affects a large percentages. It is usually spread through infection, meaning that when one person is infected, he can pass the disease on, and then the infected person will again pass it on. In most epidemics the infection spreads rapidly, from one person to the other, resulting in a large percentage of the population being infected. One of the most notable examples of a epidemic is the 1919, Spanish Flu, which spread around the world and killed around 20 million people. The fact that the disease was highly contagious, meaning that it transferred very quickly from one person to the other. When there is an epidemic outburst, the flu virus could be spread in many ways, even through the air we breath, or by touching an infected person.
Even though there are rapidly spreading viruses, epidemics, there are others that spread slowly. The AIDS virus cannot travel through the air, it is transmitted mostly through sexual intercourse or by coming in contact with the infected person's personal items (toothbrush, bed sheets, or clothes) . This means that the AIDS epidemic travels more slowly than, for example the Spanish flu. Diseases also spread in other ways, through insect bites, and dirty water. Dirty water is the largest cause of diseases on the planet. The World Health Organization estimates that 25 million people a year die because of infections from water born diseases.







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