Instructions:

Write a 4000 word fully referenced essay that addresses the following question:

"A person's own normal flora is the reservoir that poses them the greatest risk of infectious disease." To what extent do you agree with this opinion; defend your position with reference to the published literature

Hints and Tips
- The essay must be fully referenced using the UWE Harvard referencing system
- Plagiarism is a serious academic offence. You must not copy and paste chunks of text from the papers you read. Instead you must write the material in your own words to show your understanding of the topic.
- For a level three essay you should be using primary sources (i.e. peer-reviewed journal articles) for most of your information
- You need to avoid using non-peer reviewed websites such as Wikipedia as references (though looking at them may give you a start point). However, you may need to use the websites of organisations such as the World Health Organisation, the Public Health England, or the Centre for Disease Control (America's equivalent) to access up to date epidemiological data.
- The essay must be written in scientific style English - read a review article in a journal such as FEMS microbiology reviews to get a feel for what this means
- As you have plenty of time to do this essay and opportunity to "spellcheck" and proof read the essay we will expect a high standard of editorial quality - for example bacterial names must be spelt correctly and typed in italics; gene names must also be in italics however protein names should be in standard print.
- Make sure you set your "spellcheck" dictionary to UK English
- Avoid the use of single sentence paragraphs
- Use tables, graphs and images where they add to your account
- You need to be critical of the literature, if two papers disagree with each other you will need to try to discuss why they disagree
- This question requires that you state an opinion, so make sure the essay content and your conclusion match