Table of Contents
- Microbes – Harmful to Humans
– Mode of transmission
- Types of Diseases Based on their Means of spreading
- Summary
- What’s Next?
In the previous segment of the chapter ‘Microorganisms’, we studied about the Useful Microbes for Humans. In this segment, let us get acquainted with Harmful microbes for humans.
How can microbes be harmful to humans?
There are useful as well as harmful microbes around us. The harmful microbes have the capacity to penetrate our body and start dominating it. They derive all the necessary nutrition from our body for their survival and leave our cells damaged. Such disease-causing organisms are called Pathogens. For example, bacteria, fungi, protozoans, and viruses have the ability to cause a particular infection.
Pathogens
How do pathogens enter our body?
- Microbes enter our body to derive nutrients directly. Some of them stick to the surface of our cells while others get inside it and harm the target cells.
- They come in through all the openings of our body, most commonly the nose and the mouth. They enter through the air that we breathe. For example, bacteria causing air- borne diseases like Tuberculosis or Measles.
- Some pathogens prefer coming in through contaminated water that we consume. For example, pathogens causing water-borne diseases like Typhoid and Cholera.
- Many pathogens require intermediate organisms that act as a medium of transmission. Such organisms are called Vectors or Carriers. For example, the female Anopheles mosquito that carries microbes causing malaria.
- There are a few more ways like the consumption of contaminated food by which pathogens can invade our bodies.
