Everyday Science — Chapter 4
Diseases & Medicine — Bacterial and Viral Diseases, Vaccines and Deficiency Diseases
Why this chapter matters: disease questions are the most predictable block in Everyday Science — the papers do not ask for essays, they ask “which germ causes it?”, “which organ does it hit?”, “which vitamin’s lack causes it?” and “which vaccine prevents it?” Our verified banks hold 103 questions matching this topic by question text, and the weight sits exactly where this chapter puts it: viral diseases (33 questions) — above all AIDS/HIV and hepatitis — followed by deficiency diseases (24) — scurvy, rickets, beriberi, night blindness, anaemia, goitre — then bacterial diseases (13), other infectious diseases (9), vaccines (7) and non-infectious diseases (17). Chapter 3 already anchored the diseases that belong to one organ (pneumonia to the lungs, hepatitis to the liver, malaria to spleen and liver, diabetes to the pancreas, goitre to the thyroid); this chapter teaches the full catalogue — cause, spread, organ and prevention — so no disease question has to be guessed. The vitamin sources behind the deficiency diseases belong to Chapter 5 (Vitamins, Food & Nutrition) and are cross-linked, not repeated: here the disease is the unit, there the nutrient is.
Exam Trend box — 🔁 Most repeated: the viral-disease family (33 chapter questions) and the deficiency-disease family (24) — together more than half the chapter’s bank weight, and the chapter aggregate of 103 questions clears the 🔁 threshold on its own. ⭐ Must know: no ⭐ mark is claimed at chapter level in this pass — the dated 2024–26 paper evidence for a single disease family was not re-run for this chapter, and a mark is never guessed. 🆕 Newly appeared: the 2025 health year — ten dated 2025 health items, tabled in Section 7A (WHO eliminations and classifications, the US measles resurgence, Pakistan’s polio drive); no 🔁/⭐ is claimed for the table itself, covering one year only.
1. The framework — four kinds of germ, four routes of spread
- A pathogen is a germ that causes disease. The papers sort diseases by their pathogen first — learn the four rows, and half the chapter answers itself:
| Pathogen | What it is | Examples papers ask |
|---|
| Bacteria | Single-celled microbes; many are killed by antibiotics | Cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis, tetanus, diphtheria, pneumonia, plague, leprosy |
| Virus | A particle that must live inside a host cell; antibiotics do not work on viruses | Polio, measles, mumps, smallpox, chickenpox, influenza, hepatitis, dengue, rabies, AIDS, COVID-19 |
| Protozoa | Single-celled animal-like microbes, usually carried by an insect | Malaria (Plasmodium), sleeping sickness, amoebic dysentery |
| Fungi | Moulds and yeasts; mostly skin and surface infections | Ringworm, athlete’s foot, dandruff |
- Bacteria were discovered by van Leeuwenhoek (Chapter 3). Antibiotics kill bacteria, not viruses — that single distinction answers a whole family of “which of the following is not caused by bacteria?” questions.
- Routes of spread — the papers’ second favourite sorting:
| Route | Diseases |
|---|
| Water-borne (dirty water/food) | Cholera and typhoid — the textbook pair, asked together |
| Air-borne (droplets) | Tuberculosis, measles, chickenpox, influenza, pneumonia, diphtheria |
| Vector-borne (an insect carries it) | Malaria (Anopheles mosquito), dengue (Aedes aegypti), yellow fever (Aedes), elephantiasis (Culex mosquito), sleeping sickness (tsetse fly), plague (rat flea) |
| Blood / body fluids | Hepatitis B and C, AIDS (HIV), tetanus (through a wound) |
- Communicable = spreads from person to person (cholera, TB, measles, influenza). Non-communicable = does not spread (diabetes, cancer, arthritis, hypertension) — Section 7.
- Endemic = regularly found in an area; epidemic = sudden outbreak; pandemic = worldwide spread (COVID-19).
2. Bacterial diseases — the catalogue
| Disease | Germ (standard name) | Organ / sign | Spread & exam note |
|---|
| Cholera | Vibrio cholerae | Intestine — severe watery diarrhoea, dehydration | Water-borne; paired with typhoid in papers |
| Typhoid | Salmonella typhi | Intestine, fever | Water-borne; the “typhoid and cholera are typical examples of → water-borne diseases” question is asked verbatim |
| Tuberculosis (TB) | Mycobacterium tuberculosis | Lungs (can hit other organs) | Air-borne; bacterial infection; BCG vaccine prevents it; Robert Koch identified the TB bacillus |
| Tetanus | Clostridium tetani | Nerves/muscles — lockjaw | Enters through a wound; the injection after an injury is the tetanus (TT) injection; “which is caused by bacterial infection? → tetanus” |
| Diphtheria | Corynebacterium diphtheriae | Throat | Air-borne; the “diphtheria affects the ___ → throat” question is asked verbatim; prevented by DPT |
| Pneumonia | Streptococcus pneumoniae | Lungs / respiratory system | Bacterial lung infection (Chapter 3); also prevented by the PCV pneumococcal vaccine in the EPI schedule |
| Whooping cough (pertussis) | Bordetella pertussis | Respiratory tract — violent coughing fits | ”Pertussis is commonly known as → whooping cough”; prevented by DPT |
| Plague | Yersinia pestis | Lymph nodes, lungs | Rat flea vector; the Black Death of history |
| Leprosy | Mycobacterium leprae | Skin and nerves | Chronic, slow; curable with multi-drug treatment |
| Anthrax | Bacillus anthracis | Skin, lungs, intestine | Animal disease that jumps to humans handling infected animals |
- The DPT trio is the exam shortcut: Diphtheria, Pertussis (whooping cough), Tetanus — one triple antigen vaccine covers all three (Section 5).
- “Which of the following is not caused by bacteria? → rabies” — rabies is viral, and it is the papers’ favourite negative question in this section. Keep the bacterial list and the viral list apart and that question is free.
3. Viral diseases — the catalogue
| Disease | Virus / note | Organ / sign | Spread & exam note |
|---|
| Polio (poliomyelitis) | Poliovirus | Nerves — paralysis, usually of the legs | Faecal–oral; caused by a virus (lecture standard); prevented by OPV/IPV; Jonas Salk made the injected polio vaccine, Albert Sabin the oral drops |
| Measles | Measles virus | Skin rash + fever | Air-borne; prevented by MR/MMR at 9 and 15 months (Section 5) |
| Mumps | Mumps virus | Salivary (parotid) glands — swollen cheeks | Air-borne; “mumps is caused by → virus” |
| Smallpox | Variola virus | Skin — pustular rash, scarring | First successful vaccine: Edward Jenner, 1796, from cowpox; declared eradicated worldwide by WHO in 1980 — the only human disease ever eradicated |
| Chickenpox | Varicella-zoster virus | Skin — itchy blisters | Air-borne; “chickenpox is caused by → virus” |
| Influenza (flu) | Influenza virus | Respiratory tract | Air-borne; “influenza is a → viral disease”; swine flu is an influenza strain |
| Hepatitis | Hepatitis viruses A, B, C, D, E | Liver — jaundice | A and E: water/food (“hepatitis A is transmitted by → water”); B and C: blood/body fluids; hepatitis B has a vaccine, hepatitis C has none; raised AST = indication of hepatitis (Chapter 3) |
| Dengue | Dengue virus | Fever, joint pain — “breakbone fever” | Female Aedes aegypti mosquito (“which female mosquito causes dengue? → Aedes aegypti”); no specific drug, no routine vaccine in the EPI schedule |
| Rabies (hydrophobia) | Rabies virus | Brain/nerves — fear of water | Dog bite; treatment discovered by Louis Pasteur (“treatment of rabies / cure of hydrophobia → Pasteur”); fatal once symptoms appear, preventable by prompt post-bite vaccination |
| AIDS | HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) | Immune system — T-cells | Blood, sexual contact, mother-to-child; “AIDS virus destroys the ___ system → immune”; “the AIDS virus is called → HIV”; World AIDS Day: 1 December; HIV is a single-stranded RNA virus |
| COVID-19 | SARS-CoV-2 | Respiratory system | Air-borne; the lectures teach it in 4 stages (Chapter 3) |
| Zika | Zika virus | Fever, rash; risk in pregnancy | Mosquito-borne; found in Uganda (lecture standard) |
| Yellow fever | Yellow-fever virus | Liver, fever, jaundice | Aedes mosquito; vaccine exists |
| Ebola | Ebola virus (filovirus) | Fever, haemorrhage | First identified in 1976 in Sudan and Zaire (now DR Congo) (PMS Screening 2026 GK Grand Mock 15, Q88; the first-identification fact is mock-only, no mark claimed) |
| Marburg | Marburg virus (filovirus) | Fever, haemorrhage | The same filovirus family as Ebola — the family name is the exam point (PMS Screening 2026 GK Final Mock Test, Q64; mock + 1 CA-bank row, below the 5-paper limb; no mark claimed; distinct from the Marburg–Rwanda outbreak row examined-and-not-taught in the 2025 health-year note below) |
- AIDS is the single most repeated viral topic in the banks (13 of the 33 viral questions): the virus name (HIV), the system it destroys (immune), the cells it hits (T-cells), the day (1 December) — learn those four and the whole run is covered.
- Hepatitis is the second viral anchor: organ (liver), jaundice link, and the A-vs-B/C transmission split. “Hepatitis and jaundice are diseases of → liver” is asked verbatim.
4. Other infectious diseases — protozoa, parasites and fungi
Malaria — the protozoal classic
- Malaria is caused by a protozoan — Plasmodium (not a bacterium, not a virus).
- Vector: the female Anopheles mosquito (“name the mosquito that causes malaria → Anopheles”); male mosquitoes feed on nectar and do not bite.
- Discovery: Laveran discovered the malarial parasite in blood cells; Ronald Ross discovered the mosquito link (lecture standard: “Ronald Ross discovered malaria”).
- Cure: chloroquine — an anti-malaria drug.
- Organs: spleen and liver (“which two organs/glands are affected by malaria? → spleen and liver”; one bank paper answers “spleen” alone — the pair is the full answer).
- Sleeping sickness is also protozoal — caused by Trypanosoma, carried by the tsetse fly.
- Amoebic dysentery is protozoal — Entamoeba histolytica, water-borne, intestine.
- Elephantiasis (filariasis) is parasitic — the Culex mosquito carries it (“elephantiasis is caused by → Culex mosquito”); it blocks the lymph vessels and swells the limbs.
Fungal diseases — one line, one answer
- Ringworm, athlete’s foot, dandruff and mycoses are fungal diseases — asked as a group, verbatim. Ringworm is not a worm; athlete’s foot is a foot fungus; dandruff is a scalp fungus.
5. Vaccines & immunisation — how prevention is asked
- What is a vaccine? The banks’ own definition: treated bacteria or viruses, or one of their proteins, given so the body builds its own defence (immunity) without suffering the disease. A vaccine prevents disease — it is not a drug that kills germs inside a sick patient (see Traps).
- Immunity by vaccination = artificial active immunity — artificial because the vaccine is given, active because the body makes its own antibodies after exposure to the vaccine antigen (PMS 2026 Biological Science mock; the chapter’s vaccine definition above is the same mechanism, this is its asked label).
- History in four names:
| Name | Contribution |
|---|
| Edward Jenner (1796) | Smallpox vaccine from cowpox — the world’s first successful vaccine; “vaccine” comes from Latin vacca (cow) |
| Louis Pasteur | Rabies treatment/vaccine; also worked on cholera and anthrax vaccines |
| Jonas Salk | Injected (killed-virus) polio vaccine |
| Albert Sabin | Oral polio drops (OPV) — the drops used in campaigns |
- The vaccine table papers draw from:
| Vaccine | Prevents | Exam note |
|---|
| BCG | Tuberculosis | Given at birth; “BCG is used to produce immunity against → tuberculosis” |
| OPV / IPV | Polio | OPV = oral drops, IPV = injection; birth, 6, 10, 14 weeks and 9 months in Pakistan’s schedule |
| DPT / Pentavalent | Diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), tetanus (+ hepatitis B and Hib in pentavalent form) | The triple antigen; 6, 10, 14 weeks |
| PCV | Pneumococcal pneumonia/meningitis | 6, 10, 14 weeks |
| Rota | Rotavirus diarrhoea | 6, 10 weeks |
| MR / MMR | Measles and rubella (+ mumps in MMR) | 9 months and 15 months |
| TCV | Typhoid | 9 months |
| TT (tetanus toxoid) | Tetanus | The injection after an injury; also given in pregnancy |
| Hepatitis B vaccine | Hepatitis B | Part of pentavalent; birth dose in some provinces |
| Rabies vaccine | Rabies | Given after a bite, urgently — post-exposure, not routine |
- Pakistan’s EPI schedule (Expanded Programme on Immunisation) — the six-visit shape papers and parents both need:
| Age | Vaccines |
|---|
| At birth | BCG + OPV-0 |
| 6 weeks | OPV-1, pentavalent-1, PCV-1, rota-1 |
| 10 weeks | OPV-2, pentavalent-2, PCV-2, rota-2 |
| 14 weeks | OPV-3, pentavalent-3, PCV-3, IPV-1 |
| 9 months | MR-1, TCV, IPV-2 |
| 15 months | MR-2 |
- Why polio still appears in papers: Pakistan is one of the last countries where wild polio has not been eradicated, so polio-campaign and polio-free-country questions (the banks ask “WHO recently declared which country polio-free? → India”) recur. The answer pattern is always the same: virus, OPV/IPV, Salk/Sabin.
6. Deficiency diseases — when the body lacks something
Deficiency diseases are caused by the lack of a vitamin or mineral (the banks’ own definition question). The nutrient sources are taught in full in Chapter 5; here is the disease side, which is what the papers actually ask.
| Deficiency | Disease | Signs papers ask |
|---|
| Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) | Scurvy | Bleeding gums; blood won’t stop; “anti-scurvy factor → vitamin C”; prevented by vitamin C intake |
| Vitamin D (calciferol) | Rickets (children) / osteomalacia (adults) | Soft, weak bones that bend and break; “rickets is a disease of → bones”; “which vitamin is useful in osteomalacia? → vitamin D” |
| Vitamin A (retinol) | Night blindness → xerophthalmia | Cannot see in dim light; “night blindness is caused by lack of → vitamin A”; deficiency question lists night blindness + xerophthalmia together |
| Vitamin B1 (thiamine) | Beriberi | Nerve and muscle weakness; “beriberi is caused by deficiency of → thiamine / vitamin B” |
| Vitamin B3 (niacin) | Pellagra | The “3 Ds”: dermatitis, diarrhoea, dementia |
| Iron | Anaemia | Bloodlessness — marked reduction of red cells; “iron deficiency causes → anaemia”; “element found in haemoglobin whose deficiency causes anaemia → iron” |
| Iodine | Goitre | Swollen thyroid gland (neck); “goitre is caused by → iodine deficiency”; cure = iodine (Chapter 3) |
| Protein (severe) | Kwashiorkor | Swollen belly, wasted muscles in a malnourished child — protein lack with enough calories |
| Protein + calories (severe) | Marasmus | Severe wasting — total food lack |
| Vitamin K | Bleeding tendency | Vitamin K helps blood clot (Chapter 3: haemophilia contrast — haemophilia is inherited non-clotting, not a vitamin lack) |
- Anaemia vs amnesia (Chapter 3 trap, repeated because papers repeat it): anaemia = bloodlessness / RBC deficiency; amnesia = loss of memory. Different words, different chapters of medicine.
- Goitre has two faces — do not merge them: iodine deficiency causes goitre (this section), and the thyroid gland itself is the goitre organ (Chapter 3). Both wordings are asked; both answers are “thyroid/iodine”.
- Kwashiorkor vs marasmus: kwashiorkor = protein lack (the child may look fed — swollen); marasmus = everything lack (the child wastes away). The pair is asked together.
7. Non-infectious diseases papers ask
These do not spread, but the banks ask them in the same disease blocks, so they are taught here rather than orphaned.
| Disease | Asked-for fact |
|---|
| Diabetes | Pancreas malfunctions → fails to make insulin; patient’s urine contains extra sugar; medicine = insulin; World Diabetes Day: 14 November |
| Cancer | Uncontrolled cell growth; treated by chemotherapy and radiotherapy; World Cancer Day: 4 February |
| Leukaemia | Cancer of the blood — abnormal increase in white blood cells (white cells grow excessively) |
| Asthma | Airways disease — breathing difficulty (counted in Chapter 3’s strays as a Topic 4 disease, not a lung-infection question) |
| Arthritis | Inflammation of the joints |
| Parkinson’s disease | Brain disease (Chapter 3: boxer Muhammad Ali had it) |
| Alzheimer’s disease | Degeneration of nerve cells; memory loss |
| Hypertension | High blood pressure — the 120/80 figure from Chapter 3 is the normal line it crosses |
7A. Retrospective: the 2025 health year 🆕 2025 trend (origin year 2025)
2025 was a year of WHO verdicts — countries certified free of a disease, a virus reclassified as cancer-causing, and one old enemy coming back in North America — plus Pakistan’s own polio story, which is the table’s anchor for a Pakistani paper. One rule first: “eliminated as a public health problem” and “certified free” are WHO verdicts on transmission, not claims that the disease no longer exists anywhere — Kenya still has tsetse flies, Suriname still has mosquitoes; what stopped is local transmission at the level WHO certifies. Every date and figure below was rechecked against the WHO/IARC/CDC record or the national programme’s own figures — where the bank’s early figure differs, the final figure is taught and the bank figure is flagged, not hidden.
| When (2025) | Item | What examiners will ask |
|---|
| 3–9 February | Pakistan’s first nationwide polio drive of 2025 | Target 45.4 million children under five, door to door, 400,000+ frontline workers, bivalent oral polio vaccine (bOPV); the National Emergency Operations Centre put the children actually reached at 44.3 million+ — teach the target and the reached figure separately, not as one number. The drive answered the 2024 resurgence in the row below |
| 2024, counted January 2025 | Pakistan’s 2024 polio year — 68, then 74 | The bank’s January 2025 row answers 68 cases — that was the count as the year closed (Dawn, 30–31 December 2024): Balochistan 27, KP 20, Sindh 19, Punjab 1, Islamabad 1, highest district Dera Ismail Khan with 10. Dawn itself warned the count would rise as late December samples were tested — and the programme’s final 2024 tally, confirmed in December 2025 reporting, is 74. Pakistan and Afghanistan remain the only two polio-endemic countries |
| June 2025 | Measles returns in North America | The bank’s June row asks which virus was spreading in North America — measles. The Texas outbreak centred on Gaines County reached 762 confirmed cases (Texas DSHS, 18 August), and the US national total for 2025 passed 1,900 cases by 10 December — the highest US measles year since 1992, driven by undervaccinated communities. The exam point is the reversal: a vaccine-preventable disease, back at scale |
| 30 June | Suriname certified malaria-free | First country in the Amazon region to earn WHO malaria-free certification; last local P. falciparum case 2018, last P. vivax case 2021, after nearly 70 years of effort. Certification needs three consecutive years with no indigenous transmission — the definition behind every “declared free” question in this table |
| 22 July | WHO chikungunya warning — 5.6 billion at risk | WHO warned of early signs of a global chikungunya epidemic: an estimated 5.6 billion people in 119 countries at risk; the 2025 surge began in the Indian Ocean islands (La Réunion, Mayotte, Mauritius — about a third of La Réunion’s population infected) and spread to Madagascar, Somalia, Kenya, Southeast Asia and Europe. Vector: Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus — the same mosquitoes as dengue, which is why the papers pair them |
| July | Nipah virus, Kerala | Kerala’s Health Department stepped up vigilance after Nipah cases in two districts of the state. Nipah is a zoonotic virus (animals → humans, also person to person), first identified in the 1998–99 Malaysia–Singapore outbreak, with a 40–75% fatality range and a standing WHO priority-disease listing — the reason a two-district alert makes a paper question |
| 27 June / 28 July | Hepatitis D classified carcinogenic (Group 1) | IARC Monographs Volume 139 (published in The Lancet Oncology, 27 June) classified hepatitis D virus as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1) — sufficient evidence for hepatocellular carcinoma, alongside hepatitis B and C. HDV only infects people already infected with hepatitis B, and co-infection carries a two- to six-fold higher liver-cancer risk than hepatitis B alone. WHO announced the classification on World Hepatitis Day, 28 July — the B vaccine is therefore also the D shield, since D cannot infect without B |
| 4 August | First US human screwworm case | CDC confirmed on 4 August the first travel-associated human case of New World screwworm in the United States — a Maryland patient who had travelled from El Salvador, where an outbreak was under way; the patient was treated and recovered, and US officials put the public-health risk at very low. Early Reuters-sourced reports named Guatemala as the travel origin; the Health and Human Services confirmation names El Salvador — teach El Salvador, and flag the Guatemala version as the superseded early report, not a second case |
| August | Kenya free of sleeping sickness | WHO validated Kenya as having eliminated human African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) as a public health problem — the 10th country to reach the milestone, and the first in East Africa at this level; Kenya’s form was the rhodesiense parasite (Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense), carried by the tsetse fly of Section 4. Kenya’s earlier neglected-disease elimination was Guinea worm, certified 2018 |
| 2 September | WHO: suicide behind more than 1 in 100 deaths | The WHO World Mental Health Today report (2 September): more than one in every 100 deaths globally is due to suicide — an estimated 727,000 suicides in 2021, the latest year with data, with 20 attempts for every death; suicide was the second leading cause of death for girls and women aged 15–29 and the third for males the same age in 2021. The figure is a 2021 statistic reported in 2025, not a 2025 count — teach the year with the number |
| 13 October | Maldives: world’s first triple elimination | WHO validated the Maldives as the first country in the world to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV, syphilis and hepatitis B together (triple EMTCT). The Maldives had already achieved dual elimination (HIV + syphilis) in 2019; the hepatitis B leg rested on over 95% birth-dose vaccination coverage and a 2023 school-entry serosurvey finding zero hepatitis B infections in young children |
- The pattern to carry into the paper: 2025’s health questions are WHO-verdict questions — which country was certified, which virus was classified, which disease came back. The four verdict words to keep apart are certified (Suriname, malaria — no indigenous transmission for three years), eliminated as a public health problem (Kenya, sleeping sickness — below the WHO threshold, not zero cases for ever), classified Group 1 (hepatitis D — carcinogenic to humans, on sufficient human evidence) and validated (Maldives, triple elimination — the formal WHO sign-off after review).
- Bank rows behind this table: 14 CA-bank rows across 6 month files (January ×4 polio rows, June ×1 measles, July ×3, August ×4, October ×1, December ×1) — script hidden_files/goldmine-notes-count-eds04-2025health.py over the 17 CA files / 2,012 questions. Eight further health-flavoured rows were examined and not taught: Nigeria-onchocerciasis (attribution not re-verified), mpox “recently declared” (the PHEIC was August 2024, stale in a March 2025 file), HMPV “first cases 9 January Beijing” (the China surge was December 2024), Marburg-Rwanda (a 2024 outbreak recycled in a November 2025 file), Sudan’s “70 cholera deaths” (single-row toll, unverified), Tumorix (unverified), lecanemab’s Australia approval (timing not re-verified) and the koala chlamydia vaccine (niche, not one-paper material).
8. Master table — cause, organ, prevention at a glance
| Disease | Cause type | Organ | Prevention / cure asked |
|---|
| Cholera, typhoid | Bacteria | Intestine | Clean water; (cholera vaccine exists) |
| Tuberculosis | Bacteria | Lungs | BCG at birth |
| Tetanus, diphtheria, whooping cough | Bacteria | Nerves/throat/airways | DPT triple antigen |
| Pneumonia | Bacteria | Lungs | PCV; antibiotics |
| Plague, leprosy, anthrax | Bacteria | Nodes/skin/lungs | Vector control; drugs |
| Polio | Virus | Nerves | OPV/IPV; Salk/Sabin |
| Measles, mumps, chickenpox | Virus | Skin/glands | MR/MMR (measles) |
| Smallpox | Virus | Skin | Jenner 1796; eradicated 1980 |
| Hepatitis | Virus | Liver | Hygiene (A/E); vaccine (B) |
| Dengue | Virus | Blood/joints | Aedes aegypti control |
| Rabies | Virus | Brain | Pasteur; post-bite vaccine |
| AIDS | Virus (HIV) | Immune / T-cells | Blood safety; 1 December |
| COVID-19 | Virus (SARS-CoV-2) | Lungs | Vaccination; airborne precautions |
| Malaria | Protozoa | Spleen + liver | Anopheles control; chloroquine |
| Sleeping sickness, dysentery | Protozoa | Brain/intestine | Tsetse control; clean water |
| Ringworm, athlete’s foot | Fungi | Skin | Hygiene; antifungals |
| Scurvy, rickets, beriberi, night blindness | Deficiency (C, D, B1, A) | Gums/bones/nerves/eyes | The missing nutrient (Chapter 5) |
| Anaemia, goitre | Deficiency (iron, iodine) | Blood/thyroid | Iron; iodine |
| Diabetes, cancer, arthritis | Non-infectious | Pancreas/cells/joints | Insulin; chemo/radiotherapy |
9. Rapid-fire one-liners
- Cholera = Vibrio cholerae, water-borne; typhoid = Salmonella typhi, water-borne — the pair is always asked together.
- TB = Mycobacterium tuberculosis, lungs, bacterial, BCG at birth, Koch identified the bacillus.
- Tetanus = lockjaw, wound, Clostridium tetani; diphtheria = throat; pertussis = whooping cough; all three = DPT triple antigen.
- Pneumonia = Streptococcus pneumoniae, lungs/respiratory system.
- Plague = Yersinia pestis, rat flea; leprosy = Mycobacterium leprae, skin/nerves; anthrax = Bacillus anthracis.
- Polio = virus, paralysis, Salk injected / Sabin oral, OPV/IPV.
- Smallpox = variola virus, Jenner 1796 cowpox, eradicated 1980 (WHO) — first and only eradicated human disease.
- Measles, mumps, chickenpox, influenza = viral; mumps hits the salivary glands; influenza = viral disease.
- Hepatitis = liver; A/E by water, B/C by blood; B has a vaccine; raised AST = hepatitis; jaundice = liver.
- Dengue = breakbone fever, female Aedes aegypti; malaria = protozoa (Plasmodium), female Anopheles, Laveran parasite / Ross mosquito link, cure chloroquine, organs spleen + liver.
- Rabies = hydrophobia, dog bite, Pasteur; AIDS = HIV, immune system, T-cells, 1 December, single-stranded RNA virus.
- COVID-19 = SARS-CoV-2; Zika found in Uganda; yellow fever = Aedes mosquito.
- Sleeping sickness = protozoan (tsetse fly); elephantiasis = Culex mosquito; ringworm/athlete’s foot/dandruff = fungal.
- Vaccine = treated bacteria/viruses or their proteins; BCG = TB; triple antigen = DPT; MR at 9 and 15 months; EPI visits: birth, 6, 10, 14 weeks, 9, 15 months.
- Scurvy = vitamin C (anti-scurvy factor); rickets = vitamin D, bones; osteomalacia = vitamin D; night blindness = vitamin A (+ xerophthalmia); beriberi = thiamine / vitamin B1; pellagra = niacin (B3).
- Anaemia = bloodlessness, iron deficiency, red-cell reduction; goitre = iodine deficiency, thyroid; kwashiorkor = protein lack; marasmus = total food lack.
- Diabetes = pancreas/insulin, urine has extra sugar, 14 November; cancer treated by chemotherapy + radiotherapy, 4 February; leukaemia = white blood cells excess; arthritis = joint inflammation; Parkinson’s = brain; Alzheimer’s = nerve-cell degeneration.
- Antibiotics kill bacteria, not viruses; “not caused by bacteria → rabies”.
- 2025 health year (Section 7A): Suriname malaria-free 30 June (first Amazon country); Kenya sleeping sickness eliminated August (10th country); hepatitis D Group 1 carcinogenic June (only with hepatitis B, 2–6× liver-cancer risk); Maldives triple elimination 13 October (HIV + syphilis + hepatitis B, first in the world); Pakistan polio 68 at year-end 2024, final 74, first 2025 drive 45.4m target, 44.3m+ reached.
10. Most-asked facts (from our verified past-paper banks)
- Viral diseases — 33 questions: AIDS/HIV dominates — the virus name (HIV), the immune system destroyed, T-cells hit, World AIDS Day 1 December, single-stranded RNA — asked over a dozen ways; then hepatitis (liver, jaundice, water transmission of A) and polio/smallpox/rabies inventor questions (Jenner, Pasteur, “polio is caused by virus”, “smallpox is caused by virus”).
- Deficiency diseases — 24 questions: anaemia (iron) asked five ways; scurvy (vitamin C) asked five ways including “anti-scurvy factor”; goitre (iodine) asked three ways; night blindness (vitamin A) asked three ways; rickets/osteomalacia (vitamin D) asked three ways; beriberi (thiamine/vitamin B) asked twice.
- Bacterial diseases — 13 questions: typhoid + cholera = water-borne (asked three ways); pneumonia → lungs/respiratory system (asked three ways); diphtheria → throat; pertussis = whooping cough; tetanus = bacterial; tuberculosis = bacterial.
- Other infectious — 9 questions: malaria (Anopheles, protozoa, spleen, Laveran, male mosquitoes on nectar); ringworm/athlete’s foot/dandruff = fungal; sleeping sickness = protozoan; elephantiasis = Culex.
- Vaccines — 7 questions: what vaccines are (treated bacteria/viruses or their proteins, asked twice); Jenner/smallpox vaccination (asked three ways); triple antigen; BCG → tuberculosis.
- Non-infectious — 17 questions: diabetes (pancreas, insulin, urine sugar, 14 November — asked six ways); cancer/leukaemia (chemo/radiotherapy, white cells, 4 February); arthritis = joint inflammation; Parkinson’s/Alzheimer’s = brain/nerve cells.
- 2025 health year (Section 7A): the CA bank asks the year’s health verdicts by country and disease — Suriname malaria-free, Kenya sleeping-sickness-free, Maldives triple elimination, hepatitis D carcinogenic, US screwworm case, Pakistan polio drive — 14 bank rows across 6 month files. The most-asked angles are country + disease + WHO verdict word (certified / eliminated / classified / validated).
- Taught from the lectures, capsules and standard references, no direct site-bank question-text match in this run’s count: the full causative-organism names (Vibrio, Salmonella, Mycobacterium, Clostridium, Corynebacterium, Bordetella, Yersinia, Bacillus), the hepatitis A–E split, the full EPI visit table, kwashiorkor/marasmus and pellagra as named diseases, and the plague/leprosy/anthrax rows — the banks ask these diseases through their organs, vaccines and transmission routes, and the IBES Everyday Science capsule bank behind the chapter covers the organism names. The practice set is filtered by tags at serve time.
11. Traps & confusions
- Vaccine prevents, it does not cure by killing germs: one bank paper answers “a vaccine is used to kill germs, virus and disease” — that is loose wording. A vaccine trains immunity before infection; antibiotics kill bacteria during infection. Do not swap the two jobs.
- Cholera-vaccine inventor — bank papers split: one bank paper keys the first cholera vaccine to Jaime Ferran, another to Louis Pasteur. Ferran is the standard answer for the first cholera vaccine; Pasteur’s cholera work was on fowl cholera in animals. Where both names appear, follow Ferran.
- “A plague on both your houses” is not a disease question: two plague-wording questions in the raw count were an idiom and a synonym (“pestilence”) — removed from the count. Only the disease questions count.
- Tropic of Cancer is not cancer: two “Tropic of Cancer” geography questions matched the cancer pattern raw and were removed. The disease is the cell-growth disease; the Tropic is a latitude line.
- AIDS survival time — old papers vs modern medicine: one old bank paper answers “about two years” for survival after AIDS diagnosis. That is a pre-treatment-era figure; modern antiretroviral treatment extends life by decades. Papers ask the virus, the immune system and the T-cells — not a survival number — and this chapter teaches no survival figure.
- Hepatitis A vs B/C transmission: A (and E) spread by water/food; B and C by blood/body fluids. Papers test exactly this split — “hepatitis A transmitted by → water” is the A answer, not the hepatitis answer in general.
- Dengue mosquito vs malaria mosquito: dengue = Aedes aegypti (female); malaria = Anopheles (female). Both questions specify “female” — male mosquitoes of both species feed on nectar and do not bite.
- Anaemia vs amnesia, again: anaemia = bloodlessness; amnesia = memory loss. The banks ask “anaemia is → bloodlessness” verbatim.
- Goitre: deficiency vs organ: “goitre is caused by → iodine deficiency” and “goitre is associated with → thyroid glands” are both asked and both correct — cause and organ are different questions.
- Malaria: one organ vs two: one bank paper answers “spleen” alone; the full lecture answer is spleen and liver. Where both options exist, take the pair.
- Bacterial vs viral negative questions: “not caused by bacteria → rabies” and “caused by virus → smallpox” are the same test from opposite sides. Sort every disease into Section 2, 3 or 4 first, then answer.
- Pneumonia, malaria, Parkinson’s and diabetes also appear in Chapter 3: they are counted in both chapters’ practice sets because Chapter 3 anchors them to organs and this chapter teaches them in the disease catalogue — the site filters by tags at serve time, so the overlap is deliberate, not double-counting in one set.
- 2025 health year — two bank figures corrected, not copied: the bank’s “68 polio cases in 2024” is the year-end count, not the final tally — Dawn warned at the time that late-December samples were still being tested, and the programme’s final 2024 figure is 74; and the screwworm case’s travel origin is El Salvador per the Health and Human Services confirmation, not Guatemala as early Reuters-sourced reports had it. Both corrections are taught in Section 7A, not hidden in a footnote.
- Polio-free country questions go stale: the banks’ “WHO recently declared which country polio-free? → India” was true when the paper was set; the fact to learn is the pattern (WHO declarations, polio campaigns), not the frozen answer.
12. Memory tricks (lectures first, then clean professional hooks)
- Water pair: Cholera and Typhoid share the Tap — both water-borne, both asked together, both answered with “water-borne diseases”.
- DPT = the triple shield: Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus — one shot, three letters, three diseases. The triple antigen is the triple name.
- BCG at Birth: both start with B — BCG at Birth for TB. The first visit is the TB visit.
- Aedes for dengue, Anopheles for malaria: Aedes = Arbo-disease dengue (breakbone fever); Anopheles = Ancient malaria. Better: Dengue = Day-biter Aedes; malaria’s Anopheles bites at night. Learn one pair and the other falls out.
- Jenner 1796, eradication 1980: cowpox → smallpox vaccine → 184 years from first vaccine to eradication. The two dates bookend the whole vaccine story.
- Salk shots, Sabin sips: Salk = Shot (injected), Sabin = Sipped (oral drops). Both S-names, opposite routes.
- Scurvy = C: Scurvy and Citrus share the cure — vitamin C is the anti-scurvy factor, and citrus is its source (full sources in Chapter 5).
- Rickets = D for bones that bend: D = Daylight (sunlight makes vitamin D) and Defective bones. Night blindness = A for After-dark vision.
- Beriberi = B1, the first B: the first B vitamin’s lack gives beriberi — thiamine is B1, the number is the name.
- Anaemia = iron, goitre = iodine: both deficiencies are single elements, both answers are single words — iron for blood, iodine for the neck.
- HIV hits T-cells, AIDS day is 1 December: T for the Target cell, 1 for the 1st of December — the two most-asked AIDS facts each carry their own number.
- Spleen + liver = malaria’s pair: the two organs share the malaria question the way cholera and typhoid share the water question — always answer the pair where the pair is offered.
- 2025 health ladder — S-K-M: Suriname (malaria), Kenya (sleeping sickness), Maldives (triple elimination) — three WHO verdicts, three countries, in calendar order June → August → October. Hepatitis D rides with B: no B, no D — the B vaccine is the D shield.
13. Visuals (site build specs)
- DIAGRAM — The four germ families: four panels (bacteria, virus, protozoa, fungi) each with its shape, one example disease and its route — placed in Section 1 as the chapter’s orientation graphic.
- INFOGRAPHIC — The disease master table: Section 8 rendered as a revision grid (disease → cause type → organ → prevention), colour-coded by cause type — placed in Section 8 for last-night revision.
- TIMELINE — Vaccine history: Jenner 1796 → Pasteur rabies → Salk injected polio → Sabin oral drops → smallpox eradicated 1980 → Pakistan EPI six visits — placed in Section 5.
- DIAGRAM — The two mosquitoes: Aedes aegypti (dengue, day-biter, female) beside Anopheles (malaria, night-biter, female) with Culex (elephantiasis) as a third panel — placed across Sections 3 and 4, the pair students mix up most.
- INFOGRAPHIC — Deficiency panel: vitamin/mineral → disease → sign, as a single grid (C–scurvy, D–rickets, A–night blindness, B1–beriberi, iron–anaemia, iodine–goitre) — placed in Section 6.
- DIAGRAM — Transmission routes: four arrows (water, air, vector, blood) each feeding its disease set — placed in Section 1.
- TIMELINE — The 2025 health year: February Pakistan polio drive → June Suriname + hepatitis D → July chikungunya warning + Nipah → August screwworm + Kenya → September suicide report → October Maldives — placed in Section 7A as the year’s spine.
14. Practice this topic
- Practice set: 103 verified past-paper questions in the PPSC + FPSC banks are tagged to this topic’s sub-topics (bacterial 13, viral 33, other infectious 9, vaccines & immunisation 7, deficiency diseases 24, non-infectious diseases 17) — the site serves them as this chapter’s practice set, with the IBES Everyday Science capsule questions behind them. Note for the build: the practice set is filtered by the topic’s subject+topic tags at serve time, so pneumonia, malaria, Parkinson’s and diabetes questions serve both this chapter and Chapter 3’s organ-anchored set by design.
- Companion practice (Section 7A): the 14-question CA-bank 2025-health set (January ×4, June ×1, July ×3, August ×4, October ×1, December ×1) sits behind the retrospective table; chapter bankCount 103 unchanged.
- Companion practice (Section 5 addition): the PMS 2026 Biological Science mock’s immunity item (vaccination = artificial active immunity) sits behind this chapter’s set, not counted in the 103; bankCount 103 unchanged.
- Book mode: ← Previous: Human Body & Health · Next: Vitamins, Food & Nutrition (Everyday Science) →
Goldmine Notes · Everyday Science · Chapter 4 · Sources: EDS Lecture 3 — Biology, Human Body Systems and EDS Biology (detailed notes, rechecked) for the lecture-anchored diseases; EDS Lecture 2 — Spheres & Food Science vitamin table for the deficiency rows; verified PPSC/FPSC past-paper banks (103 topic questions, script-counted, hidden_files/goldmine-notes-count-eds04.py); IBES Everyday Science capsule bank behind the chapter; Pakistan EPI schedule and Jenner 1796 / smallpox eradication 1980 verified against standard references via web check. Retrospective Section 7A (2025 health year): CA bank Jan–Dec 2025 month files (14 rows cited, script hidden_files/goldmine-notes-count-eds04-2025health.py over 17 CA files / 2,012 questions) + WHO / IARC Monographs Vol. 139 / CDC / Texas DSHS / Pakistan NEOC records for dates and final figures. Standard answers only.
