Editor: Justin Healey
ISBN 1 920801 05 7
Year 2004

Price:$19.95

  
Communicable Diseases

Volume 196, Issues in Society
Communicable diseases are diseases which are capable of being transmitted from one person or species to another, and include infectious and parasitic diseases. They account for 3.6% of all deaths and about 20% of hospitalisations in Australia, and include sexually transmitted, food-borne and blood-borne diseases. The book profiles the impacts of disease outbreaks and epidemics and lists the causes, symptoms and treatments for the major communicable diseases in Australia, including bacterial and viral infections; the common cold; influenza; pneumonia; food-borne disease; hepatitis A, B and C; and HIV/AIDS. Particular emphasis is given to the issues involving vaccination for all the major vaccine-preventable diseases, as well as additional immunisation for flu, pneumonia and meningococcal disease.

Chapter 1: Communicable Diseases
Communicable diseases; Beware, the untreatable epidemic; The global infectious disease situation: divergence and convergence; The world’s most deadly infectious diseases; Bacterial and viral infections explained; Staying one jump ahead; Treating the common cold; The common cold; Flu facts – what is the flu and how do you treat it?; Pneumonia explained; Foodborne disease in the new millennium: out of the frying pan and into the fire?; Hepatitis A, B and C: an overview; The secret destroyer; Basic information about HIV/AIDS

Chapter 2: Vaccination
Vaccines explained; The Australian Standard Vaccination Schedule; Information about immunisation; A little knowledge sways vaccination; Vaccination schedule for children; Vaccination: making your choice; Flu and pneumonia immunisation; Invasion of the flu bugs; Meningococcal disease and vaccination

Glossary; Facts and Figures; Further Links and Resources; Index.
 

Facts & Figures

• In 2000, infectious diseases accounted for 3.6% of all deaths in Australia (4,582 deaths). Influenza and pneumonia accounted for 64% (2,937) of deaths due to communicable disease. Death rates increase with age, and were greater for males than females in most age groups.

• In 1999-2000, there were 12,859 hospitalisations in Australia with a primary diagnosis of communicable diseases. Influenza and pneumonia were responsible for 20% (2,591) of hospital admissions due to communicable diseases.

• In Australia in 2001, sexually transmitted infections were the most commonly reported communicable diseases, accounting for 27.8% of all notifications, followed by food-borne diseases (26%) and blood-borne diseases (24.8%).

• Chlamydia was the most commonly reported sexually transmitted infection (20,185 notifications, 72% of total), campylobacteriosis the most common food-borne disease (16,185 notification, 61% of total) and hepatitis C (unspecified) was the most common blood-borne disease (15,649 notifications, 62% of total).

• At 31 December 2001, the cumulative number of HIV cases (since 1985) was 21,725. Also, the cumulative number of AIDS diagnoses was 8,810 (since 1981), and there had been a total of 6,174 deaths attributable to AIDS.

• Transmission of HIV in Australia continues to be mainly through sexual contact between men (77.6%). A small percentage of diagnosed infections were associated with a history of injecting drug use (4.5%) or heterosexual contact only (10.6%). Mother-to-child transmission of HIV infection remains rare in Australia.

• At 31 March 2002, 90.5% of one year-olds and 87.8% of two year-olds were fully immunised.

• According to the latest WHO estimates, infectious diseases caused 14.7 million deaths in 2001, accounting for 26% of total global mortality. Existing drugs and vaccines could have prevented many of these deaths. Simple access to food and drinking water free of faecal contamination could have prevented almost 2 million more.

• Three diseases – AIDS, tuberculosis (TB), and malaria – continue to account for a large share (39%) of deaths attributed to infectious diseases. Total deaths from these three diseases amounted to 5.6 million in 2001. When deaths from diarrhoeal disease and respiratory infections (5.8 million) are added, these five diseases alone are responsible for approximately 78% of the total infectious disease burden.

• Mortality figures, however, give only a partial measure of the toll that infectious diseases continue to take. There is a second league table – of the so-called “neglected” diseases – where health impact is measured by severe and permanent disabilities and deformities in almost 1 billion people.

• There is a third group of infectious diseases whose incidence, when plotted, reflects the abrupt peaks and plateaus of an electrocardiogram. These are the emerging and epidemic-prone diseases – the headline diseases that flare up and wreak havoc, sometimes in predictable geographical areas or seasons, sometimes in ways that take the medical and public health professions completely by surprise. Since the events of September 2001, the possible deliberate use of biological agents to cause harm has been added to this group as yet another unpredictable epidemic threat.

• Six diseases – pneumonia, tuberculosis, diarrheal diseases, malaria, measles and more recently HIV/AIDS – account for almost 90 per cent of deaths caused from infectious diseases.

• Disease experts say that beyond death and taxes, the only other certainty is that viruses will continue to leap from animals to humans, accelerated by the trappings of modern life – tourism, trade, war, climate change, population movements, crop production and intensive livestock farming.

• Air travel allows an infective agent to move from one side of the globe to the other in about 24 hours. The urban sprawl pushes humans in on animals’ territory, while climate change is driving mosquitoes – the most efficient disease carriers of all – into new areas, bringing new infections with them.

• About four million cases of foodborne infectious disease occur annually in Australia; new foodborne pathogens are emerging.

• Climate change, combined with changes in how we produce and distribute food and how we behave as consumers, have the potential to affect foodborne disease in the coming century.

• Flu kills in one of three ways: directly, by developing into a lethal secondary bacterial pneumonia; or, most commonly, the virus can worsen an underlying heart, respiratory, kidney or diabetic ailment. Anyone over 65 is also counted among the at-risk groups for flu infection.

• The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic killed about 40 million people throughout North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Brazil and the South Pacific. More people died in this pandemic, which infected more than half the world’s population, than in World War I.

• The Asian flu of 1957 killed about 1 million and the 1968-69 Hong Kong flu killed almost as many. Flu viruses originate from bird populations, mostly aquatic birds. Scientists speculate the viruses pass from birds to pigs and then to humans. The great fear is that bird and human flu viruses could mix directly in people, perhaps mutating beyond medicine’s immediate control.