disease transmission
How illness spreads
Disease transmission is the spread of illness-causing agents from one host to another.
Routes include direct contact, airborne particles, contaminated food or water, and vectors like mosquitoes.
Mosquito nets reduce malaria transmission.
Public health measures often focus on interrupting transmission chains: Hand washing is one of the simplest ways to prevent disease transmission.
- superspreaderUnusually contagious infected person
- patient zeroFirst documented infection
- virusesSubmicroscopic infectious particles
- social distancingDeliberate interpersonal spacing
- sick dayPaid absence for illness
parasites · bacteria · infection · hand hygiene · epidemiology · outbreak investigation · air · public health education · nose · population density · surveillance systems · incubation period · prions · germ theory · water quality · cough · airborne · droplets
- epidemiologyepidemic, epidemiology, pandemic, outbreak, endemic
- infectious diseasescholera, anthrax, malaria, measles, flu
- wildlife dangershark attack, bear attack, lion attack, tiger attack, crocodile attack
- microbiologybacteria, bacterium, microbe, microbes, microorganisms
- plague historyBlack Death, bubonic plague, pneumonic plague, Yersinia pestis, plague doctor
- Vector Diseasesmalaria, dengue, Zika, dengue fever, West Nile
disease transmissiondisease prevention
Measures blocking illness onset
immunity · infection control · disease resistance · immunization · prophylaxis
disease transmissionrecovery
Regaining what was lost
health promotion · healing · cure · remission · convalescence
disease transmissiondisease eradication
Permanent global elimination of pathogens