Practice Questions
1.State what the two main classes of medication are for treating communicable disease
1. Symptomatic treatments, such as painkillers and other medicines are used to treat the symptoms of disease but do not kill pathogens.
2. Pathogen targeting medicines such as antibiotics.
2. Describe why antibiotics are really useful medications
Antibiotics kill bacterial infections. The use of antibiotics has greatly reduced deaths from infectious bacterial diseases.
3. How can the chance of antibiotic resistance be decreased.
Anyone from the following table
| Condition | How to reduce the chance of antibiotic resistance |
|---|---|
| Mild, non serious bacterial infection | In a normal person antibiotics should not be prescribed. They should only be prescribed in young, elderly or those who have a compromised immune system |
| Viral Infections | Antibiotics cannot kill viral pathogens. Antibiotics should not be prescribed because antibiotics are ineffective against viral infections. Antibiotics do not harm our own cells and the virus is within a body cell. So, the antibiotic cannot harm the virus. |
| Course of antibiotics | The patients should complete the full prescribed course of antibiotics so all bacteria are killed and none survive to mutate and form resistant strains |
| Antibiotics in animal feed | Antibiotics are sometimes added to animal feed to reduce the risk of infection and help livestock grow healthily. However, using antibiotics on a large scale increases the chance of antibiotic-resistant bacteria developing. Therefore, the agricultural use of antibiotics should be reduced to help slow the spread of resistance |