• Question: What do you do if you come across an unknown disease?

    Asked by anon-233093 to Varun, Sammie, Rebecca, Anna, Alin, Adam on 20 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Rebecca Shaw

      Rebecca Shaw answered on 20 Nov 2019:

      So I have never came across an unknown disease. I’ve worked on looking at how bacteria and fungi can infect humans.

      I do think that if hospitals come across unknown diseases, they send it for testing either in their biomedical clinical labs and often samples can be sent to research labs! They test it to try and understand what it is and what it behaves like. They will then be able to treat it according to what the results say.
      For example, the influenza virus (Flu) can evolve and become different each year, meaning our body has no defence against it. Doctors try to stop us getting so badly affected by it by getting us to get flu jabs, but they don’t always manage to account for all the strains so we can still get infected. They would then just treat us as they would with normal flu, but it might take a bit longer!

    • Photo: Varun Ramaswamy

      Varun Ramaswamy answered on 20 Nov 2019:

      ooh, luckily I haven’t come across an unknown disease too.. but if you do, the first things you do are keep away from the infected people, wash yourself thoroughly and go to the doctor as soon as possible…because if the disease is unknown, then you really don’t know how it spreads either ( air, or water , or by touching a diseased person).
      So it is best to get some tests done immediately to keep yourself safe!

    • Photo: Samantha Firth

      Samantha Firth answered on 20 Nov 2019: last edited 20 Nov 2019 2:10 pm

      RUNNNNN! (only joking) 😊 That’s a great question! You’d want to be extra careful in case it was deadly! If no one had ever come across it, there could be a good chance that no one would be immune to it… You would want to isolate it and quarantine the people who has been in contact with it. Then I think you’d want to get your microscope out and take a closer look at what you’re dealing with – maybe it looks like something we’ve seen before? 🔬🔎 Then you can start to figure out how you’re going to control it and make sure it doesn’t take over the world and destroy everything 😎❌

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