ICSE Class 8 Biology, Unit 5: Health and Hygiene

What this unit aims at

In the previous classes, children learnt about health, personal and public hygiene, balanced diet, deficiency diseases, life style associated health problems and diseases caused by infection. In this class this theme aims at enabling children to know more about communicable diseases and understand their mode of transmission and prevention. Further, they will also understand the role of the immune system of the body in resisting diseases and the concepts of vaccination and immunization. Children will also appreciate the importance of ‘First Aid’ and learn to undertake some simple common first aid measures to deal with emergency situations.

Your child should be able to

• identify some communicable diseases, their causative agents and symptoms
• show concern towards maintaining personal hygiene and cleanliness of the surroundings
• list some common vector borne diseases
• differentiate between vaccination and immunization
• list the harmful effects of consumption of tobacco, drinking alcohol and taking habit forming drugs
• use some simple first aid methods in day to day emergency situations

Key concepts in this unit

• Diseases A brief idea of communicable diseases (influenza, measles, malaria, dengue, chikungunya, HIV) – causative agents, symptoms and prevention to be dealt with in a tabular form.
• The meaning of vector.
• Method of preventing diseases in general; use of vaccines to be mentioned.
• Vaccination and immunization: the concepts and difference between the two.
• Harmful effects of consuming tobacco, drinking alcohol, taking drugs.
• First Aid First aid- meaning.
• First aid given in the following cases:(burns, bleeding, fracture, object in the eye, unconsciousness, swallowing poison, snake bite, stings).