What is an epidemic?what are its main causes?how does it spread?

Question

are there any safety measures that can be taken?

Answer 1

If large no. of people suffer from infectitious disease @ a given place/area, it is called an epidemic.

Adilabad rural children suffered from epidemic of cholera, out break of cholera, dengue fever, plague, etc.

Occurance of a disease condition in population  or community in a given area at a certain period of time is called epidemic.

Answer 2

Epidemics are not just a large outbreak of an illness; they are simply a statistically significant increase over the normal (endemic) infection rate. For example, food poisoning through a salmonella infection is known to occur at a fairly stable rate through the years; however, if there was a statistically significant increase in infection due to the same strain of salmonella this would be seen as an epidemic.

The main causes would be disruptions in areas like : Living condition (refugee camps, crowding),  Economic condition (funds can not be appropriated to prevent epidemic), Biological conditions (organism may mutate, increasing pathogenic). Ecological factors (natural disasters causing disruption of sanitation and sewer).The convergence model shows how different factors weigh in to cause an outbreak. http://bp3.blogger.com/_YGLQQZTHoU0/SDmT...

The spread of the disease is dependent upon what the infectious agent itself and the causes for the epidemic rate. For example: Refugee camps formed by those fleeing Darfur are known to have poor sanitation. This poor sanitation is due to the economic and living conditions of the people. With very dense populations living in an area where funds are not available to provide proper a sanitation infrastructure  or medical treatment there are a number or diseases occurring at epidemic rates.

The safety measures that are commonly taken in these situations usually start with containment and then move to treatment, first with the cause then with the infected. During the Anthrax attacks a couple years back the first step was to quarantine those infected by the epidemic Anthrax. Next the source was identified as the envelopes and measures were put in place to prevent more people from being infected. Finally antibiotics were issued to those infected and those with a high probability of exposure.

Answer 3

An epidemic is a widespread and fast-moving outbreak of some serious illness. The cause of an epidemic would depend on what disease you are talking about. Epidemics have been caused by viruses or bacteria and transmitted by personal contact or airborne, but they have also been caused by contaminated food or water.

The problem with epidemics is that usually many people are sick before they pinpoint the cause. So until that happened, you could not make a reasonable judgment as to what you could do to protect yourself.

Answer 4

Epidemics may be due to bacterial or viral infections that spread in populations that are not immune to that particular disease.

The classical epidemic in the USA was that of influenza ( 'flu)  when it was estimated that more people died of the flu than those who died in the World War.

Other classical epidemics have been the plague in Europe and England, the cholera epidemics that still occur in Third World countries, and the recent epidemic of bird flu in the far East.

If there are definite seasonal trends to epidemics and vaccines against those diseases are available, then vaccination before the season of illness (such as your flu shot) can protect you even in the event of an epidemic in your neighborhood.  

Answer 5

We learned all about this in microbiology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemic