What Does Dysentery Mean?

Dysentery is the name for an abdominal disorder which causes inflammation of the lower intestine tract. The reason for this is generally some kind of bacteria, parasite or protozoa. The infection is characterised by severe diarrhoea, usually with the passing of blood and mucus. It can also cause stomach ache and fever.
It is an infectious disease that is spread through the means of infected food items or water that may be polluted with faeces, usually contaminated by people with hands that are unclean.

The two main types of dysentery are: Bacillary dysentery and amoebic dysentery.
According to research, bacillary dysentery affects eighty percent of the children below the age of five years, in tropical areas. If the disorder is not administered to with an antibiotic (the broad-spectrum kind is preferred) to infants, it could prove fatal.  
Amoebic dysentery is prominently found to affect people in those areas where human faeces are used in the form of fertilizers. It is caused due to the presence of an amoebic cyst in the body, the active variety of which could cause the disorder.