Communicable diseases spread from one person to another or from an animal to a person. The spread often happens via airborne viruses or bacteria, but also through blood or other bodily fluid. The terms infectious and contagious are also used to describe communicable disease.
Some of the most serious communicable diseases on a global include:
- HIV/AIDS
- Hepatitis A, B and C
- Influenza
- Malaria
- Tuberculosis
- Polio
- And other food borne illnesses
How do communicable diseases spread?
The spread of communicable diseases depends on the specific disease or infectious agent. These are some of the ways in which communicable diseases spread:
- physical contact with an infected person, such as through touch (staphylococcus), sexual intercourse (gonorrhea, HIV), fecal/oral transmission (hepatitis A), or droplets (influenza, TB)
- contact with a contaminated surface or object (Norwalk virus), food (salmonella, E. coli), blood (HIV, hepatitis B), or water (cholera);
- bites from insects or animals capable of transmitting the disease (mosquito: malaria and yellow fever; flea: plague); and
- travel through the air, such as tuberculosis or measles.
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