Q.Compare and contrast bacillary dysentery and amoebic dysentery.

Step 1. Similarities: both are intestinal infections producing diarrhoea with blood and mucus in the stools, abdominal pain and dehydration, and both spread through food/water contaminated by faeces (the faecal-oral route).

Step 2. Bacillary dysentery (shigellosis) is caused by the bacterium Shigella sp., which infects the intestine and produces its symptoms comparatively quickly and acutely.

Step 3. Amoebic dysentery (amoebiasis) is caused by the protozoan parasite Entamoeba histolytica, which lives in the large intestine feeding on food particles and bacteria; its infective trophozoite stage actively penetrates the intestinal wall and secretes histolytic enzymes, causing ulceration and bleeding — a more invasive mechanism than the bacterial form. House flies additionally act as a carrier for amoebiasis. …

List shared symptoms/transmission first, then contrast the causative orga …

• Treating the two forms of dysentery as caused by the same type of organism. …