The Evolution of Infectious Disease in Sub-Saharan Africa

At present, approximately one million Americans are infected with HIV. The WHO estimates that 33.4 million people have contracted HIV worldwide since the beginning of the epidemic in 1983 and about 2.3 million of these died in the year 1998 alone. In the USA and many other countries, AIDS is now the leading cause of death among young adults.” , & “Each year there are

The acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), which results form an infection called the human immunodeficiency syndrome virus (HIV) is a global epidemic that has taken numerous amounts of lives. There are two forms of HIV that are linked to AIDS, HIV-1 and HIV-2 (Crooks, Baur 460). HIV-1 is a virus that is constantly mutating and it is the first human immunodeficiency virus to be recognized as the leading cause of AIDS world wide, then we have HIV-2, which only occurs in some African countries (Crooks, Baur 460). In the 1980s the number of AIDS cases in the United States grew rapidly each year and eventually began to stabilize.

Harmful diseases have taken over today’s world. There is drug abuse and inappropriate sexual behaviors causing this epidemic. Individuals of our society are not taking pride in their bodies. Therefore the endless results are disease and death. One certain disease known as AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome), is a huge health concern among people of the world. The question is, “what does this disease do to the population?”

For example, living in Zambia where 60 percent of the population had AIDS and lived on less than $18 a month. The high incidence of AIDS and high death rates from the disease in Africa were only partially due to the high cost of medicine. Other factors that also played a part in the high death rate consisted of poor nutrition, lack of clean water and sanitation, measles, lack of medical infrastructure to distribute or monitor demanding drug treatments, lack of education, and culture.

These affected counties Guinea, Sierra Leon and Liberia have very weak Health Systems, Lack human and infrastructural resources, and have only recently emerged from long periods of conflicts and instability, their economy was not too good as well. On August 8, the WHO declared the West African Outbreak a Public Health Emergency of

There are many barriers to good population health in Africa. In a report on public health in Africa published in 2009, Jennifer G. Cooke, the director of the CSIS Africa Program found those issues include a lack of access to care in rural areas, deficits in trained healthcare professionals, lack of preparedness to handle outbreaks, unsanitary living conditions, lack of access to healthy food and clean water, and unsafe care of the dead and dying. Cooke mentioned that there are also social issues that contribute to poor population health in Africa, with issues such as conflict and civil unrest presenting unique challenges to health access and delivery (p. 10).

Since the nineteen hundreds, Africa coped with countless problems related to HIV and AIDS. Anthropologists, scientists, doctors, and psychologists discussed theories related to the issues presented by HIV/AIDS. Researchers study the effects of poverty, polygamy, geography, and social relationships on HIV/AIDS. One of the prevalent theories on how the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) spread is through the increase of sex workers in Africa. An increase in sex work correlates to an increase in poverty. Due to the economy and culture, women turned to sex working as a way of acquiring income. In order to reduce HIV contraction among sex workers and their clients, a change in intervention methods and legislation is needed to protect the rights of those in poverty and stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Of all the people suffering and living today with the HIV/AIDs virus, two-thirds of them live in sub-Saharan Africa, while this is true, this region constrains little more than 10 percent of the world’s population. The AIDS virus has caused an extreme amount of suffering in the people of Africa. The virus is everywhere, and this is what makes this virus so hard to stop. It’s directly affecting households, schools, and workplaces and even destroying what little economy the Africans had. In 2009, it’s estimated that about one million three hundred thousand adults and children have died as a direct result of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa (avert.org/aids-impact-africa.htm). Since the beginning of this epidemic, more than fifteen million Africans have lost their lives to AIDS. Currently, is there access to treatment of HIV and AIDS, but fewer than half of Africans affected by the virus are getting the treatment (avert.org/aids-impact-africa.htm). South Africa, without a doubt has one of the

For thousands of years, infectious diseases have had a strong influence over human populations by challenging the immune system to continuously adapt to new virulent strains. With the advantage of reproducing more rapidly than the human immune response, microorganisms that cause even minor infections can prove to be fatal (Parham, 2015). Over time, outbreaks such as ‘The Great Plague’ have threatened to bring an end to society. Without the ability to contain these diseases geographically and provide means of prevention, they run the risk of wiping out the human race completely. When considering economic costs, the vast numbers of individuals who fall ill due to an epidemic can increase healthcare costs as well as decrease labour markets. Indirect costs as a result of public actions, such as fleeing the area of outbreak, can contribute to economic damage (Barker & Bacon, 2015); not to mentioned the increased likelihood of transferring the disease from one area to another. Two infectious diseases that are of continuous interest today, HIV/AIDS and Ebola, will be contrasted in terms of their outcomes and possible alternatives to tackling similar diseases in the future. Both an economic and social lens will be utilized in order to provide an analysis that covers all implications of the disease.

According to the statistics from the World Health Organization, “30,000 children under five-years of age die every day, mainly from dehydration, undernourishment, and preventable diseases. Where there are clinics and hospitals, they are too few, and they are inadequately staffed and equipped” (WHO, 2008, para.1). Governments of those low-income countries don’t have money to build hospitals, to hire trained professional staff and to complete public healthcare system. As a result, many people died because they can not get proper treatment when they get sick.  Also, people in those area can not access to clean water and

Global health issues are diverse in different parts of the world in America it is obesity, in countries such as Indonesia there are health issues related to the quality of water, and finally in Africa aids is the health issues. HIV and AIDS has become on the biggest epidemics in the Sub-Saharan Africa region. There has been an estimated 24.7 million people were living with HIV (Shah, A. n.d). The 24.7 million people represent the seventy-one percent of the aids population in the world (Shah, A. n.d).

By the 1990s, the epidemic of HIV and AIDS was sweeping across Africa and other underdeveloped countries. By this period, the virus has taken hundreds of thousands of lives of adults and also small children. By the year of 1994, approximately for a decade

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.

According to Legal Aspects of Health Care Administration by George D. Pozgar, the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is a fatal disease that destroys the body’s ability to fight bacteria and viruses. AIDS is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). It is considered to be the deadliest epidemic in human history with the first case being reported in 1981. It has been estimated that more than 21 million people have died from AIDS. (Pozgar, 2012, p. 353 & 364)

In 2015, worldwide - approximately 37 million adults and children had HIV or AIDS, 2 million were newly infected that year, and 1 million people died of the condition. Sub-Saharan Africa makes up about 75% of the word’s HIV-infected population. Approximately 3.3 million children have HIV/AIDS in the world – most of these patients are born in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.