SMALLPOX
Smallpox is a disease caused by the Variola major virus.
Signs & Symptoms
The first symptoms of smallpox usually appear 12 to 14 days after you're infected. Following the incubation period, a sudden onset of flu-like signs and symptoms occurs. These include:
Risk Factors
Complications
Communicable / Non-communicable
Communicable: (smallpox spreads very easily from person to person.)
Signs & Symptoms
The first symptoms of smallpox usually appear 12 to 14 days after you're infected. Following the incubation period, a sudden onset of flu-like signs and symptoms occurs. These include:
- Fever
- Overall discomfort
- Headache
- Severe fatigue
- Severe back pain
- Vomiting, possibly
- Flat, red spots appear on your tongue and in your mout
- Then spots appear hands and forearms, and later on your trunk.
- Then many of these lesions turn into small blisters filled with clear fluid
- Fluid turns into pus
- Scabs begin to form eight to nigh days later
- Scabs fall off leaving deep, pitted scars
- Lesions also develop in the mucous membranes of your nose and mouth
- quickly turn into sores that break open
Risk Factors
- Worldwide immunization stopped the spread of smallpox three decades ago
- Last case reported in 1977
- Experts fear bioterrorists could use the virus to spread disease.
Complications
- Sometimes fatal
- Severe scars on face, arms, legs
- Possibly blindness
Communicable / Non-communicable
Communicable: (smallpox spreads very easily from person to person.)