Invisible Killers: Infectious Diseases in Developing Countries
About the Course:
Every year, millions of people in developing nations die of diseases that are rare and easily treated elsewhere. This course will investigate the health concerns prevalent in these impoverished areas with a focus on infectious diseases. We will highlight a variety of bacterial, viral, and parasitic pathogens from a historical, social, and medical perspective. This course will discuss their molecular bases of infection and transmission and how the immune system battles such infections. Additionally, we will explore the history of these illnesses, discuss their underlying causes, and investigate different methods to alleviate these health crises. We will not only study current plans to solve these medical problems, but also study the flaws within those programs. We want our students to gain a well-rounded, scientific and social education about infectious diseases in developing countries, and utilize this information to consider novel ideas to solve current problems.
This class will be based on lectures, guest speakers, and documentaries; students will be expected to participate in classroom discussion. Discussion will provide students with the opportunity to address their interests and explore novel ideas with their classmates. By the end of the course, students will have a general understanding of the different infectious agents, their modes of replication and propagation inside the human host, how the immune system responds to such threats, and how they are transmitted. In addition, students will also be expected to know the basic signs and symptoms, prevention, as well as how socioeconomic factors affect treatment, outcome, and spread of the disease. This course aims to pique students' interests in infectious disease, and students will gain insight on these public health issues from a biological, medical, and social perspective. This course will challenge students to think critically about methods that can be used to solve these health issues based on what they have learned.
Each lecture topic will address:
- A brief history of the infectious disease
- Biology of the pathogen
- The molecular mechanism of infection
- The immune response
- Symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, prognosis
- Transmission & prevention
- Areas affected around the world
- Barriers to treatment: culture & socioeconomic factors
- Efforts to resolve these health issues
How to Enroll:
This course will start on 1/27/2010. If you are on the roster, but you do not show up for the first day of class, you will be dropped. If you have any questions, please send us an email! firstname.lastname@example.org. Make sure to check this website regularly for updates.
Course Contact: invisiblekillers10 AT gmail.com
Faculty Sponsor: Professor Laurent Coscoy
Time & Location:
|Only Section||Sanjeev Kumar|
|35||109 Dwinelle||W 6p-8p||2/03||started||—|
|Syllabus: InvisibleKillersSyllabus.pdf||Jan 19||16kb||Adobe PDF (Viewer)||View Download|
Course info last modified January 22, 2010. This page has been viewed 1858 times.Could not update hit count.
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