Case Concepts
A person in a population who has been identified as having a specific disease.
What is a case?
The habitat where an infectious agent lives, grows, and multiples, and on which it depends for its survival in nature.
What is a reservoir?
An individual who has been exposed to and harbors a disease causing organism and who has done so for some time, even though the person may have recovered from the disease.
What is an active carrier?
The uninterrupted and immediate transfer of an infectious agent from one person to another.
What is direct transmission?
Preventing a disease/disorder before it happens.
What is primary prevention?
The first disease case in a population during an epidemic.
What is a primary case?
An inanimate object that can harbor an infectious agent and is capable of being a means or transmission.
What is a formite?
An individual who has been exposed to and harbors a pathogen but has not become ill or shown symptoms of the disease.
What is a healthy or passive carrier?
Occurs when a agent is transferred, or carried by some intermediate item, organism, mean, or process to a host, resulting in disease.
What is indirect transmission?
Aimed as health screening and detection activities used to identify disease.
What is secondary prevention?
The first disease case brought to the attention of the epidemiologist, but not always the primary case.
What is an index case?
An invertebrate animals that transmits infection by conveying the infectious agent from one host to another.
What is a vector?
An indivdual who harbors a pathogen and who, although in the recovery phase of the course of the disease, is still infectious.
What is a convalescent carrier?
Occurs when droplets or dust particles carry the pathogen to the host and cause infection.
What is airborne transmission?
Requires behavioral change in the indivdual.
What is active primary prevention?
An indivdual who becomes infected and ill after the disease is introduced into a population and who is infected as a result of contact with the primary case.
What is a secondary case?
An infectious organism in vertebrate animals that can be transmitted to humans through direct contact, fomite or vector.
What is a zoonosis?
An indivdual who has been exposed to and harbors a pathogen, is in the beginning stages of the disease, has symptoms, and the ability to transmit the disease.
What is an incubatory carrier?
Occurs when an arthropod conveys the infectious agent
What is vector-borne transmission?
The limitation of any disability by providing rehabilitation when a disease, injury, or disorder has already occurred and caused damage.
What is tertiary prevention?
An individual or group who has all the signs and symptoms of a disease but has not been diagnosed or has the cause of the symptoms connected to a suspected pathogen.
What is a suspect case?
An inanimate intermediary that conveys the infectious agent from its reservoir to a susceptible host.
What is a vehicle?
An indivdual who has been exposed to and harbors a pathogen and who can spread the disease in different places or at different intervals.
What is an intermittent carrier?
Occurs when the pathogen undergoes changes as part of its life cycle while within the host/vector and before being transmitted to the new host.
What is biological transmission?
Any attempt to restore an afflicted person to a useful, productive, and satisfying lifestyle.
What is rehabilliation?