An Unnatural History of Emerging Infections by Barrett Ron Armelagos George & George J. Armelagos

Author:Barrett, Ron, Armelagos, George & George J. Armelagos
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2013-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 4.3. Sneeze in progress, depicting a cone-shaped plume of respiratory droplets being expelled from the nose and mouth. People with additional respiratory conditions can sometimes transmit a pathogen further than if they were infected by one disease alone. This is sometimes referred to as the “cloud effect.” Photograph by Brian Judd. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In addition, elderly populations have often served as reservoirs for antibiotic resistance in bacterial pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas auregenosa, and Klebsiella pneumoniae, which have become endemic to nursing homes and long-term care facilities in the United Kingdom and North America (Smith et al. 2000). Although nursing homes are beginning to appear in larger cities of the developing world, they are still quite rare in non-Western societies. More common is the inappropriate and incomplete use of antibiotics, which is especially prevalent in developing countries where low-cost generic medicines can be readily obtained without prescriptions. Such medicines present cheap alternatives to professional medical care when older people become sick in poor societies. As we will see later, such practices have greatly contributed to the evolution of drug-resistant pathogens.

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