<P> North America's primary risk factors for illness are currently alcohol abuse, malnutrition, obesity, tobacco use, and water sanitation . Obesity is a recent epidemic in North America . The 1990s brought a rise in the average Body Mass Index, or BMI . From the beginning and to the end of the decade, the median percent of adults who were obese rose from 12% to 20% . Alcoholism is the addiction of over-consumption of alcohol and is highly prevalent in the US . There are high incidence rates in many other world regions . Roughly 61% of American adults drank in 2007, and 21% of current drinkers consumed five or more drinks at one point in the last year . There have also been 22,073 alcohol induced deaths in the United States in the past year, about 13,000 of which were related to liver disease . Alcoholism has many risk factors ingrained in North American culture, such as heredity, stress from competition or availability . </P> <P> The Swine Flu (also known as (H1N1) epidemic is a recent disease emerging in the early 21st century . In April 2009, during the early days of the outbreak, a molecular biologist named Dr. Henry Miller wrote in the Wall Street Journal about New York City high - school students . These students apparently brought the virus back from Mexico and infected their classmates . All six cases so far reported in Canada were connected directly or indirectly with travel to Mexico as well . Flu viruses can be directly transmitted (via droplets from sneezing or coughing) from pigs to people, and vice versa . These cross-species infections occur most commonly when people are close to large numbers of pigs, such as in barns, livestock exhibits at fairs, and slaughterhouses . The flu is transmissible from human to human, either directly or via contaminated surfaces ." </P> <P> There are many diseases that affect South America, but two major conditions are malaria and Hepatitis D. Malaria affects every country in South America except Uruguay, Chile, and The Falkland Islands . Elevation is a major factor in the areas where malaria is found . The disease is spread from person to person via mosquito bites . People are typically bitten by mosquitoes at dusk and dawn . Symptoms of this disorder are: high fever, chills, sweating, headaches, body aches, weakness, vomiting and diarrhea . If left untreated, new symptoms can occur; people that are infected may experience seizures, delirium and coma . Severe cases may end in death . Malaria can be cured, but the symptoms may not become noticeable until months later . There are three forms of medication that can cure Malaria . An infected person's accessibility to these drugs is dependent upon their access to medical care and their financial situation . Literature about Malaria treatment typically is focused toward people who are tourists . Most sources are not written with the native in mind . </P> <P> The first sign of Hepatitis D was detected in 1978 when a strange and unrecognizable internuclear antigen was discovered during a liver biopsy of several Italians who suffered HBV infection . Scientists initially thought that it was an antigenic specificity of HBV, but they soon found that it was a protein from another disease altogether . They called it "Hepatitis Delta Virus" (HDV). This new virus was found to be defective . HDV needed HBV to act as a helper function in order for it to be detected . Normally Hepatitis B is transmitted through blood or any type of blood product . In South America Hepatitis D was found to be fatal . Scientists are still unsure in what way this disease was being transmitted throughout certain South American countries . Sexual contact and drug use are the most common means of transmission . HDV is still considered an unusual form of hepatitis . Agents of this virus resemble that of plant viroids . It is still hard to tell how many stereotypes exist because HDV is under the umbrella of HBV . HDV causes very high titers in the blood of people who are infected . Incubation of Hepatitis D typically lasts for thirty five days . Most often Hepatitis D is a co-infection with Hepatitis B or a super-infection with chronic hepatitis . In terms of super infections there are high mortality rates, ranging seventy to eighty percent; in contrast with co-infections which have a one to three percent mortality rate . There is little information with the ecology of Hepatitis D. Epidemics have been found in Venezuela, Peru, Columbia, and Brazil . People who are treated for Hepatitis B have been able to control Hepatitis D. People who have chronic HDB will continue to get HDV . </P>

What is the relationship between health and illness