7 Horrible Diseases ...

Many people think this is a disease of the past but 1 in 3 people around the world suffer from Tuberculosis today and it kills several million people every year. TB eats away your lungs till you start spitting blood. Nice if your lover is a vampire I guess.

About half a billion people are infected by malaria carrying parasites every year and it kills up to 3 million of the sufferers. It affects tropical areas but is easily prevented with nets, which unfortunately are an unaffordable luxury for most families in developing countries.

One of the many horrible diseases caused by dirty water, Schistosomiasis, aka Bilharzia is pretty gruesome. A worm crawls in through the skin and makes its way to the liver where it starts chewing. It occasionally spits out eggs covered in spikes which embed in other body parts so they can start sucking blood from that part of the body. Sometimes they reach the genitals and cause blood in the urine. It is estimated 200 million people currently suffer from this disease.

You may scoff at the inclusion of flu in a list of horrible diseases but even though it’s fairly innocuous in most strains and only kills tens of thousands, every 20 years or so a bog standard flu virus mutates and in this highly virulent pandemic form can kill millions. Flu viruses mutate faster than human vaccines can be made for them.

Thirty years ago we didn’t even know what AIDS was. The developed world might have wised up to safe sex and have introduced treatments of expensive drug cocktails but in Africa AIDS is devastating. Horrifically, it is even used as weapon in war. Infected soldiers rape women of the opposing side purely intent on passing on the disease. AIDS has killed 25 million people to date.

This revoltingly horrible disease is pretty much restricted to parts of Africa although cases occur in the West when early stage infects leave their homelands or as in the well known incident in the US, when infected animals are imported, legally or illegally. The virus interferes with blood coagulation and eventually sufferers die from hypovolemic shock.

Possibly the most indiscriminate of diseases, the cause is unknown, symptoms don’t appear sometimes until it is too late to do anything about it and then it might be an incurable form. Massive amounts of research continue into finding the trigger that causes cells to mutate in the meantime this disease has a major dread factor the world over.

Well ladies, I’m really sorry about the depressing nature of my post. I’d like to end by sincerely hoping that you all die a nice happy death peacefully at home in your beds and not from one of these or any other of the many horrible diseases that plague our world.

Which disease or way of dying do you fear most?

Top Photo Credit: Norse_Graphics