NCERT Solutions Curiosity Chapter 3 Activity 3.6: Let us read — How to Prevent and Control Diseases? (2026-27)

Q1.

What do you infer from this case study?

Answer

That simple steps like good sanitation can greatly reduce the spread of communicable diseases — and that they work best when a whole community acts together.

Follow the chain in the Bhadrak case study:

Community campaign in Bhadrak district, Odisha
→ more people build and use toilets
→ open defecation reduced significantly
→ drinking water and soil no longer contaminated with excreta
→ fewer cases of diarrhoea and infections; child health improved

Why it happens: diseases such as cholera, typhoid, hepatitis A and roundworm all travel the same way — from the excreta of an infected person into water, soil or food, and then into someone’s mouth. A toilet cuts that route at the very first step, so all of these diseases fall at once. No medicine can do that.

The second inference is just as important: one family’s toilet is not enough. Water and soil are shared, so the campaign had to reach the whole village before the diarrhoea cases dropped. Health is partly a community matter, not only a personal one.

Q2.

Find about such community campaigns held in your location. Share in your class and discuss with your peers about the impact of such initiatives.

Answer

How to find out. Ask at the gram panchayat or municipal ward office, the primary health centre, or the school office; speak to the ASHA or anganwadi worker; look at the notice boards in the health centre; and check local newspapers. For each campaign, note four things: who ran it, what people were asked to do, how long it lasted, and what changed afterwards — the last one is the real test.

Sample answer — campaigns commonly found across India:

Campaign	What it does	Which diseases it acts on
Swachh Bharat Mission	Building and using toilets, clearing waste, cleaning drains	Cholera, typhoid, hepatitis A, roundworm, diarrhoea
Pulse Polio / universal immunisation drives	Polio drops and other vaccines for every child, house to house	Polio, measles, tetanus, hepatitis
National Deworming Day	A deworming tablet for school children	Ascariasis and other worm infections
Anti-dengue “dry day” drives	Emptying coolers, tyres, pots and tanks once a week	Dengue, malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases
Fit India Movement	Encouraging daily physical activity, yoga and a balanced diet	Non-communicable diseases — obesity, diabetes, heart disease

Discuss: which of these needed everyone to take part before it could work, and which helped even the one family that followed it? You will find that the sanitation and mosquito drives need the whole community, while vaccination and exercise also help the individual directly.