Some weeks back, Ukraine which is a country in war sent food relief to my country Nigeria which is actually going through internal war from terrorist and inflation but while a lot of people have comments to make, it made me understand that the world we are is really connected and planes even made connecting them easier.
This connection has also placed us in a very bad spot when it comes to disease transmission. For instance Ebola Virus was brought into Nigeria by a man who flew in from Sierra Leone and thanks to medical practitioners who noticed it early enough, it would have become an endemic situation in the country. The covid-19 pandemic was another case. The pandemic started from China but touch every continent as a result of our interconnection but in al these, it looks like there are diseases that are found only in certain parts of the world and do not leave there for any reason.
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Let me start with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever which is caused by tick but isn’t the same thing as Lyme disease. This bacterial disease is predominant in South Central and Southeastern United State. This disease is contracted when ticks infected with the bacteria Rickettsia rickettsii bite a person. People with this disease usually come up with fever, rash, and headache. This disease is treatable with antibiotics once doagnosed but difficult to diagnose since a lot of disease have the same symptoms. The terrible news os that if the disease is not diagnosed early enough, it can lead to damage of the vessles, paralysis, gangrene and in worst case scenario death.
The reason why it looks like the disease is isolated to certain regions is because of the specie of ticks that carry the bacteria. There are three species of ticks that carry this bacteria and they are the American dog tick in the Eastern, Central and Western United States, the Rocky Mountain wood tick in the Rocky Mountain states, and brown dog tick in the Southwestern United States. To be precise, the disease in common in Tennessee, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, and along the U.S.-Mexico border. While it is possible that this ticks my move to different locations in rhe future, for now they are predominant in the US.
Still in the United States, is another disease that has fever as a suffix and that’s Valley Fever. Also known as Coccidiomycosis is a fungal disease caused by the fungi Coccidioides and is found in the soil. This fungi finds its way to the environment when contaminated soils are disturbed after which they are inhaled in the air. The fungi grow in the lungs after which their spores burst to cause infection in the lungs and other organs in the body. It can sometimes be asymptomatic but for a few people they can develop flu-like symptoms which then go away over time. It is predomant in Phoenix, Mexico and part of South America. Antifungal medications can be used to treat people with this disease. In recent times, people were seen to have contracted it in Washington DC but then it is still in the United States.
It is no doubt you are scared of Rabbies just like I am, and in Australia there is a rabies like virus known as the Australian bat lyssavirus. This virus can be gotten when an infected bat scratches or bites a person and the person starts to present with symptoms similar to rabies virus and similar to Rabies, there haven’t been a cure after manifestation.
In Africa, Uganda to be precise is home to another bat causing virus known as Marburg Virus. This disease is carried by the Egyptian Rousette Bats which lives in caves in Egypt as their name implies but how they got to Uganda and cause disease there is completely not understood yet. Onset Symptoms include fever, chills, and body ache, but over time patients begin to have rash, then they begin to manifest more severe symptoms like delirium, bleeding, after which the patient begins to experience multiple organ failure, which can then lead to death. This virus can also be contracted through bodily fluid from persons to person.
You think that is all we will be hearing from Bats, the. You are wrong because this flying mammal is the carrier of another disease in Bangladesh, and in some parts of Asia known as Nipah virus. This disease was first found in Malaysia and Singapore but has since been continually ofcuring in India and Bangladesh. People can get infected by ofcourse bat attack but they can also get it hy eating fruits eaten by infected bats and this disease is transferable via person to person contact through bodily fluid. While some people are asymptomatic, others can suffer severe symptoms like respiratory illness, and encephalitis. Currently, treating the symptoms is the only way forward when it comes to this disease.
Let me pick another disease predominant to Africa, which is caused by Dracunculus medinensis also know as guinea worm which causes the disease Dracunculiasis. Common in Nigeria’s neighboring country Chad, as well as found in other countries like Mali, Cameroon, and South Sudan. It starts from lavae in water ponds which is then swallowed by water flees which find their way into the human body by ingestion. The larva stays in the digestive system until it is matured after which it sticks to the skin of its host and then begin to burrow through the skin forming a blister as it tries to get out of the body. The known remedy for Guinea worm is to remove it from the blister it caused.
Read More
https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/tickbornediseases
https://www.cdc.gov/rmsf/index.html
https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/marburg/about.html
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/rocky-mountain-spotted-fever
https://www.cdc.gov/fungal/diseases/coccidioidomycosis/index.html
https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/factsheets
https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/nipah/about/index.html
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/nipah-virus
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3201746/
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/dracunculiasis-%28guinea-worm-disease
https://www.cdc.gov/dpdx/dracunculiasis/index.html