Human Immunodeficiency Virus ( Hiv )

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.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the majority of people in the world living with HIV/AIDS reside in Sub-Saharan Africa. Since there is currently no vaccine to prevent the spread of the infection, there have been countless attempts in the past to control the spread of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. There are multiple ways of infection spread in Sub-Saharan Africa. People are contracting the disease through, drug use, sexual relations, giving birth, and blood-to-blood contact. With so many ways to contract the infection it makes the prevention of spreading the infection so difficult, especially in such a low-income country. These challenges have not stopped many scientists, educators, and health-care professionals create interventions to try and stop the wildfire, that is the spread of HIV/AIDS in Sub- Saharan Africa. Most interventions have failed and some have helped. There are a huge amount of factors that need to be carefully thought about when creating an intervention. What looks good on paper may not work for the culture of a country. Making all people in sub- Saharan Africa listen, understand and act on a plan is nearly impossible.

According to the Federal HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Office (FHAPCO 2012:1) occurrence of the Human Immune deficiency Virus (HIV) pandemic is one of the leading public health problems the world has ever realized in current history. In the past thirty years HIV has spread fast and affected entire segments of people: child, young and adult people, men and women, and the rich and the poor.

Just as clearly, experience shows that the right approaches, applied quickly enough with courage and resolve, can and do result in lower HIV infection rates and less suffering for those affected by the epidemic. An ever-growing AIDS epidemic is not inevitable; yet, unless action against the epidemic is scaled up drastically, the damage already done will seem minor compared with what lies ahead. This may sound dramatic, but it is hard to play down the effects of a disease that stands to kill more than half of the young adults in the countries where it has its firmest hold—most of them before they finish the work of caring for their children or providing for their elderly parents. Already, 18.8 million people around the world have died of AIDS, 3.8 million of them children. Nearly twice that many—34.3 million—are now living with HIV, the virus [9].

HIV is a relevant topic because unmanageable financial and coordination burdens have been forced upon the health systems (Beaubien). Some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have seen success in curbing the rate of AIDS previously. Uganda had a 26% rate of HIV/AIDS infection in 1986, and in 1987, Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni introduced a five-year government-led plan to reduce the rate (AVERT). The plan was defined by an approach to

Sub Saharan Africa is currently the most affected region for human immunodeficiency virus. For instance, the epidemic became so bad, that “ In two thousand thirteen, an estimated twenty-four point seven million people were living with HIV, accounting for the seventy-one percent of the global total. In the same year, there were an estimated one-point-five million new HIV infections and one-point-one million AIDS-related deaths.” (avert.org). However, there is possible treatment to the epidemic.

This paper explores the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as well as the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV). The virus has infected two million adults and children by the year 2005 already. The virus continues to race around the world, and new HIV infections are at 50,000 per year (Martine Peeters, Matthieu Jung, Ahidjo Ayouba) (2013). The final outcome of the HIV infection is Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). There are many treatments that have developed to help the large number of people infected (Demmer, 2002). HIV greatly spread throughout Africa while originating with African chimpanzees. There are many different theories as to what started the HIV outbreaks, but all theories come to the same conclusion that there

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is a virus that destroys the immune system which protects the body against disease and infection. The human body cannot fight disease if the immune system is weak. When a person is infected with HIV, the virus stays in the body forever. There is no cure for HIV but the medications help to control the disease. The human immune system is made weak by destroying important cells that fight pathogens. HIV is a retrovirus. It is a virus spread through certain body fluids that attack the body’s immune system known as CD4 cells or T-cells. This kind of virus when not penetrating a cell has the ability to store the genetic information on a single-stranded RNA molecule in place of the double–stranded DNA, but when penetrating a cell, the retrovirus can make a DNA version of its genes. This DNA becomes part of the disease spreading genetic material in the cell. HIV takes a long time to cause damage in the human body and therefore classified as lentiviruses.

The Human Immunodeficiency Virus, HIV, is primarily a sexually transmitted infection. It can also be spread by contact with infected blood, most commonly IV drug users, or from mother to child during pregnancy, childbirth or breast-feeding. When HIV weakens the immune system HIV develops into AIDS. The start of HIV was said to come from a strain of DNA from Chimpanzee’s to contain polio. HIV/AIDS has become a widely spread virus that affects the human immune system. Africa has had the greatest number of infected persons, both adults and children than any other continent.

Almost 36.9 million people are currently living with HIV infection and almost 10 million people being died from the infection or as a result related causes or opportunistic infections. At present people acquired the infection reported from all regions in the world. The majority of old and new cases are reported from sub-Saharan Africa which accounts for almost 70%. Most of the HIV infection affects people at their predictive life, and around 40% of the infection occurs in young youth at age less than 25 ys. (Global Health policy, 2014).

The emergence of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and the prevalence of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in the early 1980s initiated widespread global panic, but not every nation took action to combat the pandemic. Control of this relatively young disease process has been addressed in different ways in countries worldwide. Depending on the cultures of the region or the political system in place, some have made tremendous strides to reduce infection

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is a retro virus that causes AIDs by infecting the T Helper cells of the body’s immune system. The AIDS virus is the final stages of the HIV virus. HIV is a lentivirus genus, which is a subgroup of the retrovirus that causes the AIDS virus. Even with proper treatment, an infected person has a life expectancy of less than ten years.As the virus weakens the human immune systems, this effectleaves the patient compromised and at risk to opportunistic infections that the body would have once had the ability to fight, such as the flu, colds, and pneumonia. HIV attacks the cells in our immune system such as the helper T cells and is directly related to the CD4*T cells, macrophages, and dendritic cells. The HIV infection diminishes the levels of CD4*T cells. When the CD4*T cells drop to a critical low level, the body then becomes progressively more susceptible to opportunistic infections. Two types of HIV have been characterized: HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is the virus that was initially discovered and termed both LAV and HTLV-III. It is a more virulent strain, more infective, and is the cause of the majority of HIV infections globally. The lower infectivity of the HIV-2 strain compared to HIV-1 implies that fewer of those exposed to HIV-2 will be infected per exposure. Because of its relatively poor capacity for transmission, HIV-2 is largely confined to West Africa. (Wikipedia, 2014)

The world has now reached the 30th anniversary of the discovery of HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus). Out of 35 million people living with HIV worldwide, Sub Saharan Africa bears 70% of the global prevalence burden while South and South East Asia hold another 10% (UNAIDS, 2013). As the results of continuous efforts to end the epidemic, a comprehensive HIV prevention package was recommended by World Health Organization (WHO) and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) comprised of: HIV testing and counselling, correct and consistent use of condoms, treatment of sexually transmitted infections, promotion of safer sexual practices and provision of antiretroviral treatment.

There is a global trend that HIV/AIDS has prevailed the globe. According to the UNAIDS, at the end of the year 2015 there were approximately 36.7 million people around the world infected with HIV/AIDS including the estimated 2.1 million individuals worldwide who were newly infected in that year. The World Health Organization (WHO) indicates that a limit of 54% of HIV/AIDS individuals know that they’re infected. It also indicates that two thirds of the reported case (approximately 25.6 million people) occupy the sub-Saharan Africa region. With respect to the HIV/AIDS related mortality, the WHO provides an estimation of 35 million AIDS-related deaths since the start of the epidemic (including 1.1 million in 2015). The UNAIDS indicates that only a fraction of 17 million people living with HIV/AIDS were accessing its antiretroviral therapy (ART) globally. This signifies that the majority of people living with HIV/AIDS still do not have access to the treatment, care, and transmission prevention of the disease, and this would go back to one of the two possible reasons: either their country doesn’t have these medical services available, or if it does, then they do not have enough money to access the treatment in it or abroad. Therefore, the statistics provided convey a relation between the epidemic and the societal and economic conditions of the patients’ countries. This socioeconomic relation appears in the form of many negative social and

Human Immunodeficiency Virus/ Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a health concern that has claimed millions of lives globally. Despite ongoing prevention efforts such as education and medical treatment, this disease and its associated syndrome continues to be a public health challenge. HIV is a pandemic disease that infects people in every region of the world. The borderless nature of this disease makes it an international health concern. The non-discriminator nature of this disease makes prevention and control of HIV/AIDS, an especially high priority for public health organizations; this disease does not discriminate against race or gender. Some countries bare more burden than others; HIV/AIDS is more prevalent and has higher mortality rates in developing countries. This has detrimental effects on third world countries that are already struggling with social and economic challenges, such as poverty, and poor infrastructure. In many places people with AIDS face social stigma, this adds to the challenges individuals with the disease encounter. This makes it difficult for the sick in many regions to seek medical help.