Community Medicine — Communicable Disease Control, NMC MBBS licence examination syllabus (Nepal Medical Council).
Communicable disease control — NMC-style practice questions
Practice questions written for this chapter. These are not past NMC papers.
📋 About these questions: These are practice questions written to test the reasoning in this chapter. They are NOT reproduced from any past Nepal Medical Council examination, and no verified past NMC questions were supplied for this chapter. They test method rather than national lists or incubation periods, which must come from current official sources.
Level 1–2 — recall and understanding
Q1. Quarantine is the separation of:
A. People who are ill
B. People who have been EXPOSED but are still WELL
C. Laboratory-confirmed cases only
D. Health workers
ANSWER: B — exposed but well people.
Why: isolation applies to those who are ill, with duration set
by infectivity. Quarantine applies to exposed well people,
with duration set by the INCUBATION PERIOD.
LEARNING POINT: isolate the ill, quarantine the exposed.
Q2. An epidemic curve showing a single sharp peak suggests:
A. A POINT SOURCE — a single common exposure
B. Person-to-person spread
C. A continuing source
D. Laboratory error
ANSWER: A — a point source.
Why: everyone was exposed at essentially the same moment, so
cases appear within about one incubation period of each other.
A plateau suggests a continuous source; successive peaks
suggest propagated spread.
LEARNING POINT: the shape of the curve names the source.
Level 3–4 — application and reasoning
Q3. After a wedding, 90% of those who fell ill had eaten the
chicken. To decide whether chicken was the vehicle you
must also know:
A. How the chicken was cooked
B. The attack rate among those who did NOT eat chicken
C. The total number of guests only
D. The laboratory result only
ANSWER: B — the unexposed attack rate.
Why: if almost everyone ate the chicken, almost everyone who
fell ill will report eating it. Only the comparison with the
unexposed group reveals an association.
LEARNING POINT: the vehicle shows the largest DIFFERENCE
between exposed and unexposed attack rates.
Q4. A clinician strongly suspects a notifiable disease but
results are days away. He should:
A. Wait for laboratory confirmation before notifying
B. NOTIFY ON SUSPICION and begin control measures
C. Notify only if the patient is admitted
D. Notify only after discussing with the family
ANSWER: B.
Why: notification triggers time-critical public health action
— contact tracing, prophylaxis and source investigation. The
days spent awaiting confirmation are exactly the days when
action would prevent onward cases.
LEARNING POINT: confirmation can correct the record later.
Q5. An epidemic curve shows successive peaks roughly one
incubation period apart. This indicates:
A. A point source
B. A continuous common source
C. PROPAGATED person-to-person spread
D. Two unrelated outbreaks
ANSWER: C — propagated spread.
Why: each generation of cases infects the next, producing
successive waves separated by the incubation period.
LEARNING POINT: control must target transmission between
people rather than a single source.
Level 5 — exception-based
Q6. Why should control measures NOT be delayed until the
outbreak investigation is complete?
A. Investigations are usually inaccurate
B. Investigation and control run IN PARALLEL — delay costs
preventable cases
C. Control measures are cheaper than investigation
D. The case definition cannot be written first
ANSWER: B.
Why: if the source is apparent, acting on it immediately
prevents cases while the analytic work continues. Treating
the two as sequential is a common and costly error.
LEARNING POINT: the same logic underlies notifying on
suspicion.
Q7. Why might an outbreak described only from hospital
admissions appear more lethal than it is?
A. Hospitals record deaths inaccurately
B. Admitted patients represent the SEVERE END of the
spectrum — mild cases never present
C. Laboratory tests are less accurate in hospital
D. Hospital patients are older
ANSWER: B.
Why: passive surveillance captures those ill enough to
attend, so the denominator misses mild and asymptomatic
infections and the case fatality appears inflated.
LEARNING POINT: this is why ACTIVE case finding is a formal
step in the investigation.
Syllabus points
Recall and understanding questions
Application and reasoning questions
Exception-based questions
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