• Question: what is the deadlist affection people can get and if so how do they get rid of it?

    Asked by han0914 to Christina, Jess, Steve on 26 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Christina Pagel

      Christina Pagel answered on 26 Jun 2013:


      good question.. depends what you mean by deadly! Overall malaria is the infectious disease that kills most people in the world (over half a million deaths a year!) – it’s spread by mosquitoes in Africa and Asia. You can prevent by not getting bitten (using bed nets or mosquito repellents) or by taking special tablets (which are expensive and have side effects). It is treatable but still has quite a high death rate and it never really goes away… Trying to find a better treatment for it (or a vaccine) is high on the world’s health to do list!

      In terms of what disease is most likely to kill you if you caught it… well AIDS (or HIV which causes AIDS) is fatal for pretty much everyone *but* with modern treatments you can live a pretty normal life for 20,30,40 years or more… but in Africa it is very deadly since treatments are hard to get.

      Rarer but nastier is Ebola – it makes you bleed uncontrollably and kills up to 90% of people infected with it…

    • Photo: Steven Gardner

      Steven Gardner answered on 26 Jun 2013:


      Haha, I assume you meant affliction (although there are some people who’s affections can be pretty deadly!)

      The ebola virus springs to mind, it’s a really nasty disease that’s sometimes found in africa. It causes your blood vessels to break down and burst and you die from massive bleeding (blood even starts coming out of your eyes, yuck!). It has something like a 90% mortality rate (the percentage of people who die who catch the disease). Fortunately for us, it seems to be a bit too deadly for it’s own good. It wipes out whole villages and then runs out of hosts and dies. Not something you ever want to catch!

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