Afocus of infection is a place containing whatever epidemiological factors are needed for transmission of an infection. Any focus of infection will have a source of infection, and other common traits of such a place include a human community, a vector population, and environmental characteristics adequate for spreading infection.[1]
In 1854 London physicianJohn Snow discovered that people who drank from a particular water pump contractedcholera, and proposed that drinking this water from this pump was the cause of the illness.[2] At the time people did not readily believegerm theory of disease, instead favoringmiasma theory.[2] The discovery of the water pump as a source of infection set a precedent which helped establish epidemiology as a science.[2]
Agay bathhouse is a place wheremen who have sex with men meet for sex. In the 1980s at the advent ofHIV/AIDS many men who used bathhouses for sex developed AIDS as a consequence of their having sex without usingsafe sex practices for theprevention of HIV/AIDS.[3] Consequently, public health policies found bathhouses to be a place to target for public health intervention.[3]
Childcare infection is the spread of infection duringchildcare, typically because of contact among children indaycare or school.[4] This happens when groups of children meet in a childcare environment, and there any individual with an infectious disease may spread it to the entire group. Commonly spread diseases includeinfluenza-like illness and enteric illnesses, such as diarrhea among babies using diapers. It is uncertain how these diseases spread, buthand washing reduces some risk of transmission and increasing hygiene in other ways also reduces risk of infection.[5][6]
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