Q.Contrast the public-health approach to bacterial diseases with that for viral diseases, with an example.

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The question asks how the public-health approach to bacterial disease differs from that for viral disease, with an example. …

Bacterial diseases are generally managed through direct treatment after infection has occurred, using antibiotics that disrupt specific bacterial structures or bacterial metabolic processes, since bacteria are living cells with their own independent metabolism that a drug can target. Viruses, however, have no independent metabolism of their own - they multiply only by hijacking a host cell's own machinery - so there is no equivalent bacterial-style drug target for antibiotics to act on, and antibiotics are correspondingly ineffective against viral infections. Because directly treating an established viral infection is often difficult or impossible in this way, the public-health approach to viral disease shifts its emphasis much more strongly towards prevention rather than cure, chiefly through vaccination: priming a person's immune system in advance to recognise and destroy a specific virus before it can multiply and cause serious illness. The clearest illustration of this prevention-first approach is the worldwide eradication of smallpox, a viral diseas …

• Suggesting that antibiotics can be used against viral infections, when antibiotics specifically target bacterial structures/metabolism and are not effective against viruses. …