Health and Disease: Quick Revision

A brief note on Health and Disease. Read it before a test. Try each question at the end before you open its answer.

Health

• Health is being well enough to function well physically, mentally and socially. It is more than the absence of disease.
• Personal health depends on what a person does: food, rest, cleanliness.
• Community health depends on the place and the people: clean water, clean surroundings, enough food, work and income, and social equality and harmony.

Disease

• A disease is a failure of some part of the body to work well.
• Symptoms are what the patient feels. Signs are what the doctor finds.
• An acute disease lasts a short time, for example a common cold. The body recovers soon.
• A chronic disease lasts a long time, even for life, for example tuberculosis and elephantiasis. It harms overall health much more.

Causes of disease

• Most diseases have more than one cause.
• The immediate cause directly brings on the disease. Usually it is a microbe.
• Contributory causes make it easier for the disease to take hold: poor nutrition, unclean surroundings, crowded homes, harmful habits, inherited traits and poverty.
• Infectious diseases are caused by microbes and can spread: a cold, typhoid, malaria.
• Non-infectious diseases do not spread: cancer, high blood pressure. A broken bone is an injury, not an infection.
• To stop a disease from returning, correct the contributory causes as well as the immediate cause.

A worked example

A boy is ill with a cold for $6$ days. His uncle has a chronic illness that lasts $4$ months of $30$ days each. How many times as many days is the uncle ill?

1. The boy. $6$ days.
2. The uncle. $4 \times 30 = 120$ days.
3. The ratio. $\dfrac{120}{6} = 20$.

So the uncle is ill for $20$ times as many days. This is why a chronic disease harms health more.

Practice with new numbers

A program to try

The program sorts five health problems into infectious and non-infectious ones.

Mistakes to avoid

• Saying health is only having no disease. It includes mental and social well-being.
• Saying acute means mild. Acute only means short.
• Blaming the microbe alone. The contributory causes decide who falls ill.
• Calling cancer infectious. It does not spread from person to person.

Check yourself

1. Name the three parts of health.

2. What is the difference between a symptom and a sign?

3. Give one acute and one chronic disease.

4. Name the immediate cause and one contributory cause of tuberculosis.

5. Why must we remove the contributory causes after a patient is cured?