Environment: The Natural Environment

The natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally; that means the air, water, minerals, organisms, and all other external factors surrounding and affecting a given organism at any time P. The term is most often applied to the Earth or some parts of Earth and it is full of natural resources that are necessary for us to live (Johnson et al., 1997). The environment matters because Earth is the only home that humans have, and it provides air, water, foods, and other basic needs.

One of the greatest problems that the world is facing today is environmental contamination or pollution, increasing with every passing year and causing severe damage to the earth. Environmental contamination is the introduction of

Contaminated water can cause many types of diarrhoeal diseases including Cholera, Guinea worm disease, Typhoid, Dysentery, etc. Diarrhoeal diseases are responsible for 1.5 million deaths each year and the second leading cause of child mortality in the world. There is a positive correlation between these diarrhoeal diseases and other factors of vicious cycle like poverty, overcrowding, poor sanitation, low socio-economic status and inadequate health facilities. Among these there are 1.3 to 4.0 million cases of cholera itself and 21,000 to 143,000 deaths worldwide due to cholera (World Health Organization, 2014).

Cholera is a severe life threatening acute diarrhoeal disease which occurs at epidemic level. The disease is characterized by the sudden onset of nausea, vomiting and profuse watery (rice water) diarrhoea. Death may usually follows due to dehydration (briefly, excessive loss of body fluids with circulatory collapse), often within 24 hours of the onset of symptoms if untreated. It is a major public health concern in many developing countries especially in the Southern parts of Asia, parts of poverty driven Africa and underdeveloped Latin

Phages are found wherever bacteria exist like in the soil, water , intestines of animals etc. (Stephen Mc Grath & Sinderen, 2007). Phages are utilized worldwide as a substitute of antibiotics for more than 90 years and can possibly be used as a cure for multi- drug-resistant strains of many bacteria in former Soviet Union, France, United States of America, Italy, etc. (Keen, 2012). It has been observed that seasonal epidemics of cholera is negatively correlated with the prevalence of environmental cholera phages (Shah M. Faruque et al., 2004). So, there’s an inverse relationship between the bacteria and the phages. That means if the number of bacteria increases then the amount of phages decreases and vice versa. By understanding their mechanism, bacteriophages can be used as a therapeutic agent to kill those antibiotic resistant