Explain the Principles of treatment and …

• Principles of Treatment:

There are two ways to treat an infectious disease. One is to reduce the effects of the disease and the other way is to kill the cause of the disease. For the first requirement, we can provide treatments that will reduce the symptoms. The symptoms are usually a result of inflammation. For example, we can take medicines that bring down fever, reduce pain or loose motions. We can take bed rest so that we can converse our energy.

However such a kind of symptom-directed treatment by itself is inadequate. Since it will not make the pathogen go away, so the disease will not be cured. For that we have to kill the microbe itself.

It is harder to make anti-viral medicine than making anti-bacterial medicines because viruses have few biochemical mechanisms of their own. They enter our cells and use our machinery for their life processes.

• Principles of Prevention:

The approach of treatment of an infectious disease has three drawbacks:                                                            

1. Recovery of the patient may not be complete in certain cases.
2. Treatment requires time; hence the patient suffers from the disease and may be bedridden.
3. The patient serves as the source of spread of infection to others.