Discuss the Reasons Why the Research and Development of Anti-Retroviral Drugs (Arvs) Has Impacted Differently on People Suffering from Hiv/Aids in Developed and Developing World

The continents political, religious, media, and other leaders are unwilling to open up and fight the disease. The problem with this is no one is spreading awareness about AIDS. To add, the World doesn’t know much about AIDS and how much it is affecting Africa as a country.

Of the 35 million people living with HIV in the world, 19 million do not know their HIV-positive status. Adolescent girls and young women account for one in four new HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa. Women are much more vulnerable to HIV, tuberculosis and hepatitis B and C than the general public. Which is supported by this excerpt from a recent AIDSTAR-One regional report “Women and girls often face discrimination in terms of access to education, employment and healthcare. In this region, men often dominate sexual relationships. As a result, women cannot always practice safer sex even when they know the risks involved. Gender-based violence has been identified as a key driver of HIV transmission in the region.” (Ellsberg, Betron 2010) Many children are affected by the disease in a number of ways: they live with sick parents and relatives in households drained of resources due to the epidemic, and those who have lost parents are less likely to go to school or continue their education. Studies in the regions of Southern Africa and South-East Asia have found HIV/AIDS to negatively impact both the demand for and supply of education. Orphaned children are either pulled out of school or not enrolled at all due to the financial constraints of

In The Invisible Cure, Helen Epstein talks about why HIV/AIDS rate is so high in Africa compared to the rest of the world. Through the book, she gives us an account of the disease and the struggles that many health experts and ordinary Africans went through to understand this disease, and how different African countries approached the same problem differently. Through this paper, I will first address the different ways Uganda and Southern African countries, South Africa and Botswana in particular, dealt with this epidemic, and then explain how we can use what we have learned from these African countries to control outbreaks of communicable disease elsewhere around the world.

Likewise, HIV/AIDS also takes away educational opportunities from the younger generations. For instance, Lefa Khoele, a very intelligent young boy, was forced to stay behind many years due to sicknesses caused HIV, hindering his full development. In these instances, AIDS causes poverty by barring individuals from achieving proper educations and ameliorating their capital worth. When even the younger generation is affected, hope for the future is truly grim. Families must rely on older individuals, like Mamba, who have escaped the epidemic unscathed.

The relationship between Aids and African culture can be seen in various ways, values in African culture on marriage, fertility are often seen, however, more recently education and social structure have also played a role culture.

In Africa, music is an effective form of “edutainment” (Barz & Cohen, 2011, p.185). Barz and Cohen (2011) believes song, with its music and lyrics is the best mode to effectively educate people about the social and physical trauma of HIV/AIDS in Africa (p. 186). Africa has long since been known to be patient zero of the chronic disease known as HIV/AIDS. More importantly, as HIV/AIDS has spread through Africa, and now throughout the world, the industries affected in third world countries, such as Africa, have made situations even direr. More specifically, in South Africa, Lesotho, a mountainous country with an estimated population of 2 million, is suffering from the HIV/AIDS epidemic, “The two million Basotho living there are in the midst of an AIDS epidemic as calamitous as any seen in the region” (Gilden, 2009, p. 117).

HIV has evolved in new varieties over the last dozen years. The virus is constantly changing due to natural selection and the environment of the patient's body. Inside the body, HIV replicates and every time it reproduces, random genetic copying mistakes mutations result in slightly different varieties of the virus going into the bloodstream. Some of these varieties will have traits that will make them resistant to certain drugs. Natural selection favors the drug resistant forms, causing them to survive and reproduce while causing medication to not work. It was discovered in 1970, that a patient suffering with HIV whose medication did not work, by going off the drugs made his virus population soon change from being resistant to every drug to then being susceptible. This was caused by the environment change in the body when stopping the medication. The non-resistant wild-type came back and started to replicate and soon outnumbered the drug-resistant strains. This resulted in a new treatment used today. If you take a patient that is resistant to medication, off the drugs for a certain amount of time and the virus reverts to the non-resistance wild-type, then hit it hard with a combination of drugs.

This essay will focus on the health condition of (HIV) Human immunodeficiency virus and its impact on an individual’s wellbeing.

Although ninety-five percent of people living with HIV/AIDS are in developing countries, the impact of this epidemic is global. In South Africa, where one in four adults are living with the disease, HIV/AIDS means almost certain death for those infected. In developed countries however, the introduction of antiretroviral drugs has meant HIV/AIDS is treated as a chronic condition rather than a killer disease. In developing countries like South Africa, the drugs that allow people to live with the disease elsewhere in the world, are simply too expensive for individuals and governments to afford at market price.

“Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a blood-borne virus typically transmitted via sexual intercourse, shared intravenous drug paraphernalia, and mother-to-child transmission (MTCT), which can occur during the birth processor during breastfeeding.” There is no cure for HIV or AIDS but over time different types of medications have been developed that slows down the advancement of the disease. AIDS is a lethal disease that is caused by HIV. HIV destroys the immune system and causes the body to not be able to fight off any diseases.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the region of the world that is most affected by HIV/AIDS. The United Nations reports that an estimated 25.4 million people are living with HIV and that approximately 3.1 million new infections occurred in 2004. To put these figures in context, more than 60 percent of the people living with the infection reside in Africa. Even these staggering figures do not quite capture the true extent and impact that this disease causes on the continent. In 1998, about 200,000 Africans died as a result of various wars taking place on the continent. In that same year, more than 2 million succumbed to HIV/AIDS (Botchwey, 2000).

There are many solutions that may have worked in the past, but with a twist to this solution of people living with AIDS and HIV. For the people who do not know their HIV and AIDS status, at home tests would allow them to test themselves. This would give individuals the knowledge of what their own status is if they were HIV positive or HIV negative. If the people were more educated about their health and disease, these problems would not be so bad in Africa. Another way to treat these people with the disease is by medications and antibiotics. In the United States, they are using many medications to fight HIV infection. The medication they are using is called Antiretroviral therapy, also known as ART, this medication is not a cure. Although it does control the virus so they can live and reduce the risk of transmitting HIV to others, from the “Overview of HIV Treatments” (2015), they state that,

Advance in medical treatment, especially antiretroviral treatment have improved quality of life and prolongs survival. Antiretroviral treatment also reduces the probability of HIV transmission by reducing virus to undetectable level. (Vernazzaa, Hirschelb, Bernasconic et al. 2008)

HIV is a virus that is spread almost all over the world. Although in some places health care isn’t as developed and therefore it spreads more in those regions. Sub-Saharan Africa holds more than 70%, 25 million, of all HIV positive people in the world. Second highest is Eastern Europe together with Central Asia with 1.3 million. It is spread over most of the world, including Asia and the Pacific, the Caribbean, Central and South America, North Africa and the Middle East and Western and Central Europe (“The Regional Picture”).

AIDS has killed more than 25 million people between 1981 and 2007,[1] and an estimated 33.2 million people worldwide live with HIV as of 2007,[2] making it one of the most destructive epidemics in recorded history. Despite recent, improved access to antiretroviral treatment and care in many regions of the world, the AIDS