How did we eradicate diseases?!


Question: How did we eradicate diseases.?
It seems impossible to completely eliminate a disease from the earth.How did we do it.?Health Question & Answer


Answers:
Diseases are not eradicated, we simply either invent or naturally build up immunity to them via vaccines or our immune system. Unfortunately, diseases often morph and can change over time. Just because a disease is no longer prevalent, does not mean it still does not exist and still cannot infect people. For an example I'll use the avian bird flu everyone mentioned not too far back. The bird flu hasn't yet morphed into a form that can transfer from person to person, but it can transfer from birds to people. The bird flu itself is very similar to the influenza virus that killed thousands of people in the (I believe) early 1900's, but it may have been the 1800's. Either way, the disease itself is very similar, but has a different strain. All diseases have different strains and when they are not seen anymore, only immunity from that single strain was achieved. The disease itself still lives on and is fine, it just has to create a new strain we don't have vaccines for to return.Health Question & Answer

Smallpox was eradicated through massive vaccination campaigns, but unlike most diseases, humans were the only host for smallpox which helped. It is unlikely we'll eradicate others because of numerous factors (environmental, animals,mutations etc.)Health Question & Answer

By improving hygiene and sanitation, by having a surveillance system and by vaccination. Smallpox was eliminated, now the world is close to eliminating poliomyelitis.Health Question & Answer



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