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Social and economic effects of HIV and AIDS
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AIDS IS NOW A GLOBAL PANDEMIC
Millions of people worldwide are affected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. The origin of HIV not yet has a theory supported by clear evidence. Nobody knows how many people developed AIDS in the early 70s and also it is unknown for certain where the AIDS virus HIV came from, but it is now generally accepted that the origin of AIDS can be linked back to Africa. Mann J.M. (1992, p. 11) reported that “Extensive worldwide spread of HIV started in the in the mid-to late 1970s. In less than two decades – during the first of which it was unknown and unsuspected - HIV became the first modern pandemic”.To understand the meaning of AIDS it is necessary to verify some definitions from different sources. Harrison T. R. (2012, p. 1506) determines that “ Any HVI-infected individual with a CD4+ T cell count of ˂200/µL has AIDS by definition, regardless of the presence of symptoms or opportunistic diseases”. The acronym AIDS means Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. It occurs when the immune system is severely damaged for many years by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which causes AIDS. It is important to remember, a person who is “HIV positive” does not necessarily has AIDS (Healey J. 2003). HIV infection/AIDS has become a big problem for society and government due to the fact that it is a global pandemic with a long history since it was discovered and was affecting many people without distension of race, age and gender. The following essay will describe the most important events in the history of AIDS, the most significant Socio-economic factors that increase the spread of AIDS in developing countries and current initiatives to help control the spread of HIV globally.
There are essential events that o...
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...2013) stated that initially the evolution of prevention strategies are based on behavior change: abstinence, fidelity to a single partner and use of condom. Subsequently, access to sterile injection equipment and drug substitution therapy by people who inject drugs to reduce the transmission of HIV among them. Finally, the last target is biomedical advances the prevention that involves the efficacy (50% to 60%) of male circumcision to reduce the susceptibility of HIV infection, the use of antiretroviral therapy before sex with a greater efficacy to reduce HIV acquisition; treatment as prevention of mother-to-child transmission and the prevention of sexual transmission among HIV-discordant couple. Moreover, combination prevention requires the use of condoms, antiretroviral-based prevention, and prevention of behavior associated with an increased risk of infection.
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was first recognized as a new disease in 1981 when increasing numbers of young homosexual men succumbed to unusual opportunistic infections and rare malignancies (Gallant49).During this time, many people were contacting this disease because it was not discovered yet and people did not have knowledge about it.Scientists believe HIV came from a particular kind of chimpanzee in Western Africa. Humans contracted this disease when they hunted and ate infected animals. A first clue came in 1986 when a morphologically similar but antigenically distinct virus was found to cause AIDS in patients in western Africa (Goosby24). During this time, scientists had more evidence to support their claim about this disease. Once discovered this disease was identified as a cause of what has since become one of the most devastating infectious diseases to have emerged in recent history (Goosby101). This disease was deadly because it was similar to the Black Death, it was killing majority of the population. Since its first identification almost three decades ago, the pandemic form of HIV-1 has infected at least 60 million people and caused more than 25 million deaths ...
Spink, Gemma. "AIDS." AVERTing HIV and AIDS. 23 Dec 2009. Web. 11 Jan 2010. .
Although the sub-Saharan region accounts for just 10% of the world’s population, 67% (22.5 million) of the 33.4 million people living with HIV/AIDS in 1998 were residents of one of the 34 countries of sub-Saharan Africa, and of all AIDS deaths since the epidemic started, 83% have occurred in sub-Saharan Africa (Gilks, 1999, p. 180). Among children under age 15 living with HIV/AIDS, 90% live in sub-Saharan Africa as do 95% of all AIDS orphans. In several of the 34 sub-Saharan nations, 1 out of every 4 adults is HIV-positive (UNAIDS, 1998, p. 1). Taxing low-income countries with health care systems inadequate to handle the burden of non-AIDS related illnesses, AIDS has devastated many of the sub-Saharan African economies. The impact of AIDS on the region is such that it is now affecting demographics - changing mortality and fertility rates, reducing lifespan, and ultimately affecting population growth.
The main reason why this article was written was because there was a lack of attention on risk behaviours regarding women’s HIV prevention in the US. Since women have not been paid attention to, they are more susceptible then men in contracting HIV/AIDS. We need to design a risk reduction program that pays more attention to women.
O'Leary, Ann. Beyond Condoms: Alternative Approaches To HIV Prevention. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Pub., 2002. eBook Collection. Web. 20 Feb. 2013.
Research has demonstrated that consistent condom use is an effective way to prevent the transmission of HIV and other STDs and in the prevention of pregnancy.
The authors worked for the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies which belongs to AIDS resea...
There is no one fool proof method of preventing sexual activity in teenager or adolescents –the current strategies are now geared towards reducing the number of STD cases and encourage safe sex among teenagers. However, it is also important to remember that health resources have a limit and one simply cannot go on providing condoms ad lib, if they are not going to be used. One has to accept the fact there there will always be a certain population that will remain noncompliant with behavior strategies or use of condoms. The name of the game is not to have zero sexual activity or no STDs among teenagers, but just safe sex with the least number of infections.
By the year 2000, 58 million people have been infected by HIV/AIDS and alarming numbers such as 22 million would have already died. And the epidemic continues to spread. HIV/AIDS historically is considered to be one of the longest running worldwide epidemics that we have ever seen, and figures cannot be placed on the true death tolls or estimation of the damage as the cycle still is yet to reach an end (Whiteside 2002). With Africa being the worst hit continent in the world in terms of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the severity of it’s prevalence; one can only begin to question whether HIV/AIDS and poverty and directly connected or the inter-linkages exacerbate one or the other. This paper aims to argue that HIV/AIDS is a manifestation of poverty, and simultaneously poverty contributes to growing HIV/AIDS epidemic. Development in response both to poverty reduction and to HIV/AIDS is complicated when both have multi-dimensional and multi-faceted impacts on a society, whether it be social, economic or human development impacts. This paper will argue that pre-existing socio economic conditions within a country such as high levels of poverty, poor sanitation, malnutrition, environmental degradation and poor public healthcare systems and limited access to preventative care are crucial factors in contributing to the transfer of the infection (Pasteur: 2000, Mann: 1999).
The Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, commonly known as HIV/AIDS is a disease, with which the human immune system, unlike in other disease, cannot cope. AIDS, which is caused by the HIV virus, causes severe disorder of the immune system and slowly progresses through stages which disable the body’s capability to protect and instead makes it vulnerable for other infections. The first blood sample to contain HIV was drawn in 1959 in Zaire, Africa while molecular genetics have suggested that the epidemic first began in the 1930s (Smallman & Brown, 2011). Currently, according to the Joint UN Program on HIV/AIDS, 35.3 million people worldwide are living with HIV. In 2012, an estimated 2.3 million people became newly infected with the virus and 1.6 million people lost their lives to AIDS (Fact Sheet, UNAIDS). It is due to the globalized international society that a disease which existed in one part of the world has managed to infect so many around the world. Globalization is narrowly defined by Joseph Stiglitz as "the removal of barriers to free trade and the closer integration of national economies" (Stiglitz, 2003). Globalization has its effects in different aspects such as economy, politics, culture, across different parts of the world. Like other aspects, globalization affects the health sector as well. In a society, one finds different things that connect us globally. As Barnett and Whiteside point out (2000), “health and wellbeing are international concerns and global goods, and inherent in the epidemic are lessons to be learned regarding collective responsibility for universal human health” (Barnett & Whiteside, 2000). Therefore, through all these global connections in the international society, t...
The AIDS virus is the most common disease, and with no cure, an infected person will die. It is estimated that 90 to 95 percent of AIDS infections occur in developing countries where the world’s worst living conditions exist.
“Two decades after HIV first appeared an estimated 30 million people worldwide have contracted the virus; 11.7 million people have dies of AIDS” (Frankowski xi). This deadly virus has continually and rapidly spread to all different people. Around the world this virus is a major problem and is affecting more women and children then ever before. Although when this disease first appeared it was male dominated, but they have passed it on to the women and in which case they pass on to their children when they are in the womb.
In 1981, a new fatal, infectious disease was diagnosed--AIDS (Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome). It began in major cities, such as New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and San Francisco. People, mostly homosexual men and intravenous drug users, were dying from very rare lung infections or from a cancer known as Kaposi’s sarcoma. They have not seen people getting these diseases in numerous years. Soon, it also affected hemophiliacs, blood recipients, prostitutes and their customers, and babies born from AIDS-infected women. AIDS was soon recognized as a worldwide health emergency, and as a fatal disease with no known cure, that quickly became an epidemic. When high-profile victims began to contract the virus, such as basketball star Magic Johnson, the feeling spread quickly that anyone, not just particular groups of people, could be at risk. AIDS impairs the human body’s immune system and leaves the victim susceptible to various infections. With new research, scientists think that the disease was first contracted through a certain type of green monkey in Africa, then somehow mutated into a virus that a human could get. AIDS is a complicated illness that may involve several phases. It is caused by a virus that can be passed from person to person. This virus is called HIV, or Human Immuno-deficiency Virus. In order for HIV to become full-blown AIDS, your T-cell count (number of a special type of white-blood cells that fight off diseases) has to drop below 200, or you have to get one of the symptoms of an AIDS-induced infection.
Without proper knowledge and equipment, it is very difficult to prevent the spread of AIDS. Ever since the illness was discovered thirty years ago, it has taken the lives of thirty million people and affected the lives of many, many more. The AIDS pandemic has been and still is most severe in third-world countries in sub-Saharan Africa. It has impacted the economies of entire nations by crippling and killing individuals in the most productive years of their lives (“HIV/AIDS”). AIDS greatly influences the government sector, agricultural sector, private corporations, and individual households.
The emergence of HIV/AIDS is viewed globally as one of the most serious health and developmental challenges our society faces today. Being a lentivirus, HIV slowly replicates over time, attacking and wearing down the human immune system subsequently leading to AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) at which point the affected individual is exposed to life threatening illnesses and eventual death. Despite the fact that a few instances of this disease have been accounted for in all parts of the world, a high rate of the aforementioned living with HIV are situated in either low or medium wage procuring nations. The Sub-Saharan region Africa is recognized as the geographic region most afflicted by the pandemic. In previous years, people living with HIV or at risk of getting infected did not have enough access to prevention, care and treatment neither were they properly sensitized about the disease. These days, awareness and accessibility to all the mentioned (preventive methods, care etc.) has risen dramatically due to several global responses to the epidemic. An estimated half of newly infected people are among those under age 25(The Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic). It hits hard as it has no visible symptoms and can go a long time without being diagnosed until one is tested or before it is too late to manage.