Hiv And The World Health Organization

HIV has affected people all across the world. HIV comes with physical and mental symptoms. The body symptoms include skin flaking off, being dry, skin peeling off (Saliba 23) , fingernails falling off (32), and weight loss (14). Mentally it is hard to sleep, people become weak, and are tired all the time (23). People all across the world are infected with this disease, and the problem with this is the fact that most do not even know they have it. The most people who are infected each year are African Americans, gays, or bisexuals. 10,315 African Americans were infected in 2015. The U.S.A. has estimated about 1.1 million are infected with the disease. Equally to about 12,333 deaths happened in 2014 from AIDS related diseases, and 6,721 deaths from AIDS directly. Although there are a large amount of people getting infected, on the other hand eighteen percent of the population with HIV is declining since 2008-2014 (“U.S. Statistics”). In the world about 33.2 million people worldwide have HIV, with 22.5 million people in sub Saharan Africa are living with this condition, one out of nine people who live in South America have HIV or AIDS (Saliba 8).

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 50,000 people are infected with HIV each year. In 2010, the most recent year for which this information is available, there were around 47,500 new HIV infections in the United States (p. 1). The population of people with HIV is diverse due to the fact that it does not discriminate. Men and women of any age,

According to a report published in the February 1998 edition of “Nature”, scientists identified what they believe is the earliest case of AIDs in a man from the Congo in 1959. (Lerner and Hombs 39) By the end of the year 1980, 80 men would have been diagnosed with at least of the opportunistic infections that are a characteristic of AIDs. (Lerner and Hombs 40) AIDs cases in the 1980s increased dramatically not only around the world but in the United States, primarily in larger cities like Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco. The numbers of AIDs diagnoses and deaths spiraled out of control throughout the 1980s and towards the end of 1989 there were 117,500 cases of AIDS reported and 89,000 related deaths.(Lerner and Hombs 54) In the

In the 1980s, a mysterious disease began to take the lives of Americans. With the cause unknown, a fear grew among Americans. An unusually high rate of people was becoming sick with strange and rare diseases. When experimental treatments failed to work, people died. This mysterious disease is what we now know as HIV–Human Immunodeficiency Virus. In the past thirty-five years, the HIV has taken many turns in history. Although we do not hear about HIV and AIDS now, it is still a prevalent issue in the United States and in the world.

To address the communication problem, we must understand that there have been many alternative names that human-beings have given to HIV/AIDS and the amount of information and knowledge of the sexually transmitted disease has gone into overload since the huge epidemic, primarily during the twentieth century. This overload of information has caused many to disregard the issues and as an ending result caused many to focus on the issue and factors associated with HIV/AIDS as much as many once did in the past. Although HIV/AIDS no longer dominate the headlines, we must wonder are health professionals and AID advocates still giving out all the clear signs because it is apparent that HIV/AIDS are still a danger to society.

June 5, 1981 became known as the date of the official onset of HIV/AIDS epidemic when a Doctor released the stories of Patient Zero and four other cases to the Centers for Disease Control (Gottlieb, 2006). Doctors around the United States start recognizing AIDS cases. There were a total of 164 cases reported between 1979 and 1983, with 60% of those cases being reported in 1983 alone. The highest risk groups were homosexual men at 71%, drug users at 17%, Haitians at 5%, and hemophiliacs at less than 1%. Europe reported the same groups at risk.

One of the growing public health problems in the United States today is the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, among the American population. Beginning in the 1980s, the U.S. public health system has been working vigorously to come up with effective methods for preventing the spread of this debilitating virus. HIV has persistently stayed within the human population due to the continual transmission of the disease. Before widespread transmission of HIV, the two most transmissible way of contracting the disease was either using unsterile needles for drug use or by unprotected sex with partners who were infected – most of the infected individuals in the 1980s were those who were or had been in homosexual relationships.

HIV and AIDS have affected millions of people throughout the world. Since 1981, there have been 25 million deaths due to AIDS involving men, women, and children. Presently there are 40 million people living with HIV and AIDS around the world and two million die each year from AIDS related illnesses. The Center for Disease Control estimates that one-third of the one million Americans living with HIV are not aware that they have it. The earliest known case of HIV was in 1959. It was discovered in a blood sample from a man in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Looking further into the genetics of this blood sample researchers suggested that it had originated from a virus going back to the late 1940’s or early 1950’s. In 1999,

In 2014, this region had approximately 1.4 million new cases of HIV while 790,000 died of the infection. The Asian-Pacific area has less number of victims with HIV/AIDS (five million in 2014). The new infections that year were 340,000 with China, Indonesia, and India claiming 78% of the new infections in the region. The number of deaths caused by HIV was 240,000 which is an increase by 11% since the year 2000. The reason for the increase is lack of access to antiretroviral therapy. There is better news in Latin America: 1.7 million people are living with HIV. In 2014, there were 87,000 new infections and 41,000 deaths in that region. Western and Central Europe and North America region had 2.4 million HIV victims with an estimated 85,000 new diagnoses. The number of deaths was 26,000. Eastern Europe claimed 1.5 million victims, 140,000 newly diagnosed, and 62,000 deaths due to HIV related causes. The Caribbean region had 280,000 victims in 2014. Thirteen thousand were newly diagnosed and the region lost 8800 victims. In the same year, the Middle East and North Africa region had 240,000 people living with HIV, 22000 new infections, and 12,000 deaths (Joint United Nations Programmed on HIV and AIDS,

The most recent UNAIDS/WHO estimates show that, in 1999 alone, 5.4 million people were newly infected with HIV [9].

In the last three decades HIV/ AIDS has become the one of the most notorious and widely spread diseases in the modern world. Its discovery in the late seventies prompted worldwide concern. The one thing that has become the most bothersome thing about the HIV/ AIDS epidemic is prevention. Prevention or stopping the transmission of the diseases is hindered by factors such as: denial or non-acceptance by infected persons, unsafe sex, and non-disclosure by infected persons to their at risk sexual partner(s). According to Alghazo, Upton, and Cioe (2011):

Thirty-five years on June 5, 1981, what began with five cases of a rare lung infection (Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia) among five otherwise healthy gay men eventually emerged as global health crisis, which in 1982, was formally identified as acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Another two years would pass before scientists were able to isolate the retrovirus that causes AIDS, which in 1984 was termed human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV). Although a successful discovery, in the absence of a proven treatment, HIV and AIDS had free rein in which to leave in its wake a global path of fear, illness, and death. To understand the totality of HIV/AIDS, consider the following. Since the onset of the pandemic more than 70 million people have been infected with HIV, 35 million people have died of AIDS-related illnesses, and globally, at the end of 2015, an estimated 39.8 people were living with HIV (World Health Organization, 2016). Notwithstanding the global significance of HIV/AIDS, this paper, aside from a historical overview of HIV/AIDS, will focus solely on the continuing public health threat of HIV/AIDS in the United States.

HIV/AIDS infection has been an important challenge for public health authorities for more than a decade. Although the annual number of new infections has decreased substantially since the initial epidemic in the 1980s, HIV/AIDS infection still represents an important burden for society and for the health care system1,2. According to the CDC, in the United States about 1.2 million people have HIV and about 14% (168,000) of those do not know they have the infection1,2. In 2011, the Public Health Agency of Canada reported that 25% of people with HIV were unaware that they are infected3. Because HIV/AIDS infection is a preventable disease, testing and detecting infected people represent a crucial prevention measure to control the epidemic. We propose that an anonymous HIV testing program should be implemented because there is enough evidence that the potential benefits for the public outweigh the potential harms.

In the era of HIV global pandemic, estimating incidence and prevalence correctly is critical, as it becomes a strong tool for authorities to decide next action, to mitigate infection rate and its multiple consequences to society. 2 studies investigated HIV estimated incidence from different approaches. Prejean et al studied the incidence estimates in the United States, by using a four-year data obtained from HIV incidence surveillance from 16 states and 2 cities, and expanded the estimated incidence to other areas in the United States1; they used a ratio of group-specific incidence at a measured area to new AIDS diagnosis, to AIDS diagnosis in other areas1. On the other hand, Walker et al estimated prevalence by applying two strategies; using HIV prevalence of pregnant women for countries suffering general epidemics, and using HIV prevalence in high-risk groups for countries with localized epidemic to estimate HIV prevalence .2 After obtaining prevalence, they estimated prevalence using ratio of number screened against the specific group in that country against the adult population, and estimated incidence according to estimates on how long a person with HIV can survive and vertical transmission in the area with estimated national prevalence2. While both studies are carefully planned, some aspects pose assumptions and asks the reader the potential direction of bias.

Huge strides in the United States in controlling the rate of transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has been made resulting in a significant decrease of its incidence since the epidemic advent. During the epidemic’s height in the 1980s of the United States, the CDC estimated its incidence at about 150,000 new infections per year. This figure plateaued and dropped significantly during the 1990s due to introduction of highly effective antiviral treatments and due to a overall public cultural shift with promotion of HIV education, HIV testing, and condom use, especially among the LGBT community which was affected disproportionately by HIV infection. However, during the 2000s, a small, growing trend of incidence rates was seen,