Diseases that can be transmitted from one person to another person. All communicable diseases are infectious but not all infectious diseases are communicable. Diseases also vary in their ability to be transmitted; some are more communicable than are others. The chief characteristic are their incubation period, period of communicability, and their signs and symptoms. Before a disease can begin, the biological agent in the infected person (or well person who is a carrier) must find an exit from the host. The agent must then be transported to a susceptible healthy host and gain entry (portal of entry). When the environment in the new host is adequate, the agent must multiply in sufficient numbers to cause an illness that is recognized by the signs and symptoms it produces. Most biological agents have limited adaptive abilities and must exit the infected host and enter the new host directly, others can be transmitted through vectors or fomites, while others need an intermediate host in which to mature sufficiently to cause disease, noncommunicable diseases.
A disease which can be passed from one person to another or from an animal to a person.
Any disease transmitted from one person or animal to another, either directly through body discharges (e.g., nasal droplets, sputum, feces) or indirectly through substances or objects (e.g., contaminated drinking glasses, toys, bed linens) or vectors (e.g., flies, mosquitoes, ticks). Communicable diseases include those caused by viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites. Also called contagious disease.
A disease that can be transmitted from one person to another through direct contact, air vectors, food, body fluids, or excreta.
A disease that is transmitted from an infected person, insect, or animal. Communicable diseases include the forms of infection transferred from one person to another by direct contact with the infected person or that person’s bodily discharges, whether it be blood, saliva, urine, or feces, as well well as diseases conveyed indirectly via an organism, such as an insect that transmits a pathogen.
Any disease that can be transmitted from one person to another. This may occur by direct physical contact, by common handling of an object that has picked up infective microorganisms, through a disease carrier, or by spread of infected droplets coughed or exhaled into the air. The most dangerous communicable diseases are on the list of notifiable diseases.
This is an infectious or contagious disease which can be passed from one person to another. Direct physical contact, the handling of an infected object, or the transfer by droplets coughed or breathed out are all ways in which micro-organisms can be transmitted. The government produces a list of notifiable diseases, which includes all the dangerous “communicable diseases from anthrax, cholera and diphtheria through meningitis, rabies and smallpox to typhoid fever and whooping-cough The UK’s Public Health (Control of Diseases) Act 1984, and subsequent regulations in 1988, oblige a doctor who suspects that a patient has a notifiable disease to report this to the local consultant in communicable disease. Expert support is provided by the Public Health Labotatory Service via surveillance centres and specialist laboratories.
A disease that may be transmitted directly or indirectly from one individual to another.
An illness caused by a microorganism or parasite that has the potential to spread from one individual to another.