Infection Control Report: Infectious Diseases and Prevention Methods

This report provides a comprehensive overview of infection control, focusing on infectious diseases caused by bacteria, viruses, and fungi. It details the differences between these types of infections and explores various methods for controlling and preventing their spread, including immunization, hygiene practices, and isolation. The report also outlines the signs and symptoms of specific infectious diseases such as Tuberculosis, rabies, and hepatitis B. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of these control methods in minimizing the spread of diseases. The report uses multiple sources to support the findings, including books and journal articles. The report is useful for students to understand the basics of infection control and prevention.

Infections Control

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1 ......................................................................................................................................1
Infectious diseases.......................................................................................................................1
Difference between bacterial, fungal and viral infections...........................................................1
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................2
Controlling and preventing the spread of infection.....................................................................2
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................3
The signs and symptoms of infectious diseases..........................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Infection control is related to the policies and procedures that are used by the health care
centre in order to minimize the risk of spreading diseases. These infections are generated due to
bacteria and viruses. Some, diseases are also spread from human to human, human to animal and
animal to animal (Khan, Ahmad and Mehboob, 2015). The present report is based on the
infectious diseases that how it can be controlled and prevented. Further, it also explain the signs
and symptoms of these spreading infections.
TASK 1
Infectious diseases
Infectious diseases are disorders such as anxiety, depression and eating disorders that are
caused by microorganisms (Tängdén and Giske, 2015). These organisms are bacteria, viral and
fungal. These are present in a human body as they are harmless but in certain conditions they get
infected and cause a disease. Some infections are also get transferred from one person to another.
Sometimes, these can can cause a life threatening diseases. Many infectious disease are like
chicken pox that can be reduced by the vaccines.
Difference between bacterial, fungal and viral infections
Viral infection is caused by the virus that is living inside the body of human and animal.
These viruses are smallest in size and their shape is round. They never replicate outside the host
cell and can infect any kind of organism. These can be stopped by giving the vaccines to the
infected people.
Bacteria are comparatively larger in size than virus. These can cause many different types
of diseases like mild skin and so on (McNab and et.al., 2015). These are living inside the body
but do not provide any harm to them. Diseases can be occurred due to transmission from one
person to another. Infected bacteria grow and spread into the body. This can be occurred due to
the contact with a infected person. Antibiotic are given to the people who are suffering from any
disease.
Fungi have different size and shapes. These can also cause disease to the human body in
the form of yeasts. They can also provide skin related infections and these can be caused by the
air and contact with the human body (Chandler, Liu and Bennett, 2015). Size of fungi is larger
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than viral and bacteria. Fungi can infect a person and that can lead towards the life threatening
disease.
TASK 2
Controlling and preventing the spread of infection
Prevention and control of infection is necessary in order to improve the health of the
people (Duque and Descoteaux, 2015). Infection can be spread to the children and young people
when they are ill so the health care centre should use some method to control and prevent the
diseases. These methods are:
Drugs and immunisation: Immunization can reduce the chances of getting infected from
such diseases. So, vaccination should be given in order to reduce the infection among all the
people. It can be evaluated that the effectiveness of drugs is important in order to improve the
health status of population in the country. For this, health care centres should use the latest
innovative techniques that can remove the chances of any transmitting disease. Physicians can
use the STEPS model in order to improve the decisions regarding to the immunisation. STEPS is
stands for safety, tolerability, effectiveness, price and simplicity.
Hygiene practices: In order to remove the chances of getting inflected from the disease
the people should start following some of the hygiene practices and these are important for both
patients and doctors (Authority, 2015). Some practices are like wash hands before eating the
food and contact with the patients. The health care centre should follow the clean in and clean
out approach that explains that all the equipments should be cleaned. Along with this, they
should also follow the environment hygiene approach because inflection can be spread from the
environmental surface. It is essential to make the environment clean and disinfected so that
chances of infection can be reduced.
Isolation: The isolation method is used by the medical centre in order to reduce the
chances of transmitting disease and can prevent patients from infected microorganism. For this
kind of method it is necessary to kept the patients in a same room who are suffering from same
disease (Rasala and Mayfield, 2015). It can be evaluated that the effectiveness of isolation can be
improved when cross inflection will not take place.
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TASK 3
The signs and symptoms of infectious diseases
Signs and symptoms are vary from one disease to another. It depends upon the
microorganism that cause the inflection. Here, three infectious diseases are Tuberculosis, rabies
and hepatitis B (Iwasaki and Medzhitov, 2015). All these infected diseases are caused by the
virus, bacteria and fungi. Signs and symptoms of all these are different and these are depend
upon the microorganisms. The signs and symptoms of these diseases are:
Tuberculosis: This is a disease that can affect any part of the body but mainly this affect
the lungs of a person. This infectious disease is caused due to the bacterial microorganism and it
can be spread from person to person through the air. Its symptoms are:
 pain in the chest
 Cough that last more than 3 weeks
 coughing up blood
 Weakness
 weight loss Fever
Rabies: This can be caused after the bite of a rabid animal and it influenced whole body of the
person (Brook and Dobson, 2015). It affect the nervous system of the human body and it mainly
affect the neurons on some specific areas. Its symptoms are:
 Behaviour get changed of the person
 High body temperature
 Hydrophobia
 Confusion partial paralysis
Hepatitis B: This disease is caused by the hepatitis B virus that affect liver of the person. It is the
most common chronic infectious disease (Prussin, Garcia and Marr, 2015). These virus generally
affect the young people. When a person get in contact with the blood and body fluid of infected
person that it spread. Some symptoms are:
 Headache
 Fever
 Feeling very tired
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 Belly pain
 Vomiting
 Skin rash
 yellowish eyes
CONCLUSION
From the above carried out analysis it has been observed that infectious diseases are get
spread in the air and these are caused by the microorganisms. Signs and symptoms of diseases
are different that are depend upon the disease. Health care centre can control and prevent these
infectious diseases by using some methods such as immunization, hygiene practices and the use
of isolation.
REFERENCES
Books and Journal
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Khan, H.A., Ahmad, A. and Mehboob, R., 2015. Nosocomial infections and their control
strategies. Asian pacific journal of tropical biomedicine. 5(7). pp.509-514.
Tängdén, T. and Giske, C.G., 2015. Global dissemination of extensively drug‐resistant
carbapenemase‐producing Enterobacteriaceae: clinical perspectives on detection, treatment
and infection control. Journal of internal medicine. 277(5). pp.501-512.
McNab and et.al., 2015. Type I interferons in infectious disease. Nature Reviews Immunology.
15(2). pp.87-103.
Duque, G.A. and Descoteaux, A., 2015. Macrophage cytokines: involvement in immunity and
infectious diseases. Secretion of Cytokines and Chemokines by Innate Immune Cells. p.6.
Rasala, B.A. and Mayfield, S.P., 2015. Photosynthetic biomanufacturing in green algae;
production of recombinant proteins for industrial, nutritional, and medical uses.
Photosynthesis research. 123(3). pp.227-239.
Chandler, J.A., Liu, R.M. and Bennett, S.N., 2015. RNA shotgun metagenomic sequencing of
northern California (USA) mosquitoes uncovers viruses, bacteria, and fungi. Frontiers in
microbiology. 6. p.185.
Authority, E.F.S., 2015. The European Union summary report on trends and sources of
zoonoses, zoonotic agents and food-borne outbreaks in 2013. EFSa Journal. 13(1).
Iwasaki, A. and Medzhitov, R., 2015. Control of adaptive immunity by the innate immune
system. Nature immunology. 16(4). pp.343-353.
Brook, C.E. and Dobson, A.P., 2015. Bats as ‘special’reservoirs for emerging zoonotic
pathogens. Trends in microbiology. 23(3). pp.172-180.
Prussin, A.J., Garcia, E.B. and Marr, L.C., 2015. Total concentrations of virus and bacteria in
indoor and outdoor air. Environmental science & technology letters. 2(4). pp.84-88.
Online
Preventing the Spread of Infectious Diseases, 2017. [online]. Available through:
<http://www.pugetsound.edu/student-life/counseling-health-and-wellness/health-topics/
preventing-the-spread-of-infec/>. [Accessed on 19th January].
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