Leptospirosis

In Japanese, Leptospirosis is also called “mizubyou” (水病/みずびょう), which literally means “water sickness”, implying its mode of transmission, and also “nanukayami” (七日熱/なぬかやみ), which means “seven day fever”, implying its natural course.

Leptospirosis is a disease transmitted through wading in floodwaters mixed with rat urine. Symptoms such as having fever, rigors, myalgias, headache, very red eyes, yellowish eyes, cough, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea appear after around 10 days of infection. Seven days after the onset of illness, the meninges of the brain are inflamed.

Notice how descriptive the Japanese names are.

 

A Disease “More Evil Than Cancer”

If I’d be asked which disease I think is more evil than cancer, I’d say it’s Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF), and not cancer or any inborn disease.

Why? Why do I think it is worse than cancer or any inborn disease?

There’s no doubt that cancer is an evil disease. Breast, ovarian, lung, colorectal, and other forms of cancers have generally low survival rates if not treated. Breast cancer usually has the highest survival rate, while lung cancer has the lowest survival rate. However, the fact remains that these can be prevented by having a better lifestyle, not smoking, etc. In the recent era, many drugs have been developed to cure cancer. Usually, cancer is curable when discovered at an early stage, or even at Stage 4, as long as it is of the not-so-deadly type.

There’s also no doubt that inborn diseases like Down Syndrome, Pompe’s Disease, Edwards Syndrome, and others are very life threatening. Patients usually die early in life. However, most of these diseases are super rare, and babies born with these are not usually aware of the suffering they are undergoing.

Meanwhile, Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis is a disease where your lungs over a long course of time become filled with bumps and scars. It has a higher chance of death compared to almost all kinds of cancer (except lung cancer). On top of that, doctors don’t know how the disease develops or works. That is why there is no cure for IPF. The patient just gets slowly and slowly suffocated from the inside. Unless lung transplantation is done, the patient will die. Unfortunately, finding lung donors is very, very difficult.

Still, if I were to be asked what disease is truly the most evil, my answer would be the Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) such as Dengue and Schistosomiasis, as well as Tuberculosis. These are diseases of poverty and are a manifestation of poor public health measures. Deaths from these diseases are very preventable. Poor access to health services and lack of good governance indirectly kill people through these diseases.

Image source: http://err.ersjournals.com/content/errev/26/145/170047/F1.large.jpg?download=true