preview

Human Immunodeficiency Virus ( Hiv )

Decent Essays

According Canadian public health agency (2010), Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is a virus that affects the human immune system, leading to a chronic, progressive sickness that leaves people susceptible to opportunistic infections. When the body no longer can fight or resist infections, the condition is at this point referred to as AIDS, which means Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. Averagely, it has been found to take more than ten years to develop from initial infection of HIV to AIDS. Though simple in description, HIV and AIDS is a dangerous disease that has by now killed more than 20 million people across the world. Basing on the report released by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS, no cure for AIDS has been established to date, and currently there is no vaccine against HIV and AIDS infection. This paper therefore discusses the biology of HIV and AIDS, Back ground, modes of infection, clinical consequences, current research, preventive and modes of transmission, and diagnostic procedures specifically in N.America.

Background of HIV and AIDS

AIDS was initially reported on 5th June, 1981 in United States when CDC (Center for Disease Control) recorded a collection of pneumocystis carinii pneumonia in 5 gay men in Los Angeles. Initially, CDC never had a formal name for the disease, frequently terming it with respect to the diseases that were identified with it, for instance, lymphadenopathy, after which the HIV discoverers named it the virus. They as

Get Access