There have been many plagues and diseases that have killed many people throughout history, such as the Bubonic Plague, SARS, Influenza and most recently Ebola. The effects from these diseases are deadly but how can they be prevented? 
 

To put it just the way to prevent diseases is by keeping good hygiene. In history, each disease started to spread rapidly because people were not clean. For instance, in Fourteenth-Century people lived in the same room as their livestock and only too baths once a year! Most of us now feel dirty after not showering for one day let alone a full year. On top of that, there was no indoor plumbing and trash was just thrown wherever. It was just a breeding ground for bacteria and disease. As a result of the poor hygiene in Europe, the Bubonic Plague started to spread by rats and during a trade. The plague was so bad that it wiped out half of the population of Paris, Florence, and Hamburg. Complete catastrophe throughout Europe as 1/3 of the population died because of the disease. Luckily nothing this bad has happened since because generally people have become much cleaner. It needs to stay like that to prevent future diseases. 
 Although having good hygiene can stop some diseases, now there are lots of viral ones such as the flu and SARS that are viral and are hard to stop spreading. There is a way to prevent from getting viral diseases too believe it or not. It is called Vaccinations. Vaccinations significantly decrease the risk of you getting the disease. Many people do not get vaccinated because they either do not believe in it or they underestimate the disease. While it may not seem like a big deal just in America, 200,000 people get the flu every year, and 36,000 people die every year. Without the vaccinations, every year who know how much higher those numbers will be and maybe some lives could have been saved if more people took it seriously. 
 

There are some individual cases where it is hard to stop a disease if not caught fast enough. For instance, the Ebola outbreak had no vaccination to prevent it, and hygiene was not the cause of it. With cases like Ebola the only thing you can do is to Quarantine the infected and hope it does not spread beyond them or else the result could be catastrophic. Luckily the closest thing to causing that is the spread of Malaria in Central America, which was spread by mosquitos. For the most part, the way to prevent disease is keeping yourself and your surroundings clean and also, getting the correct vaccinations when needed. Never underestimate the severity of any disease. For the diseases that do not have vaccines its best to stay up to date on the news and do not go near the areas where it is spreading and see how it is spread to protect yourself best.