The Human Immunodeficiency Virus ( Siv )

Mass vaccination is the most likely cause of the epidemic. “A specific pool of Koprowski's vaccine was later shown to have been contaminated by an unknown virus.” This vaccine was given to over one million people from 1957-1960 and coincidentally there is no documented case of HIV or AIDS related infections before 1959.

HIV/AIDS has been responsible for one of the worst epidemics in history. In her book “The Invisible Cure” Helen Epstein details why Africa in particular was so devastated by the disease, which countries failed and which succeeded in the struggle to contain the virus, and why this happened. Epstein highlights a particular phenomenon, that first took place in Uganda, but which can be translated to many countries and situations, and which she calls “the invisible cure.”

There are an immense amount of problems in Africa caused by the AIDS disease. Healthcare providers are available and located all over Africa. Even though they are available, they have only “enough medicine for long-term survival available for 30,000 Africans” (Copson, 3).

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 (Avert.org) “In 1999, a strain of SIV (called SIVcpz) was found in a chimpanzee that was almost identical to HIV in humans.The researchers who discovered this connection concluded that it proved chimpanzees were the source of HIV-1, and that the virus had at some point crossed species from chimps to humans”

This book is a very interesting and detailed analysis of the AIDS epidemic. It is very fact heavy, yet it still manages to entertain the reader and capture his or her attention. This riveting narrative describes pretty much everything you need to know about HIV and AIDS. The ideas behind this compelling work were collectively put together and written by an award-winning AIDS researcher named Daniel Halperin and his coauthor, a Johannesburg Washington Post reporter, Craig Timberg. This exciting story tells you about how Western colonial powers first sparked the flame that would later come to be known as the AIDS crisis. They unfortunately helped to rapidly ignite and spread HIV and AIDS across the world. Tinderbox uses examples from

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, HIV is a virus spread through body fluids that affect specific cells of the immune system, called CD4 cells, or T cells (CDC, 2014). These CD4 or T cells serve as a defense mechanism, which fight off infections and diseases. Once this occurs, HIV leads to AIDS. Scientist identified a type of Chimpanzee in West Africa as the source of HIV infection in humans, it is believed to be called simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) (CDC, 2014). The virus was most likely transmitted to humans and mutated into HIV when humans hunted these chimpanzees for meat and came into contact with their infected blood (CDC, 2014). Studies show that HIV may have jumped from apes to humans as far back as the

The fact that certain viruses can pass between species has been known for a long time. The process of a viral transmission between animals and species is known as zoonosis. People soon began to create theories on how AIDS was developed and spread ; the "hunter" theory, also called the natural transfer theory, was one of them. This theory is the most simple and reasonable explanation of the AIDS cross-species transmission. In this theory, the virus was transmitted into humans from chimpanzees when a hunter would kill and eat them or the blood of the chimpanzee getting into cuts, wounds or bites of the hunter. This exposure to the blood or fluids

The human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV) is the causative agent of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). AIDS is characterized by a severely compromised immune system and the occurrence of life-threatening opportunistic infections. The first cases of AIDS were documented in 1981 and the isolation of HIV from a patient was described two years later.1,2 Since then, HIV/AIDS has evolved into a global pandemic. According to a report from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS published in 2016, over 36.7 million people are living with HIV/AIDS worldwide and 1.1 million HIV/AIDS-related deaths as well as 2.1 million new infections occur annually.3 Due to major efforts to raise HIV/AIDS awareness and prevent new infections, the annual number of new infections is slowly decreasing in many regions of the world, including Western and Southern Africa.3 However, infection rates have remained relatively constant in North America in recent years and have increased by over 50% in other regions, such as Eastern Europe and Central Asia.3 Despite major advances in biomedical research, a vaccine or a cure remains elusive.

HIV is one of the most feared diseases around the globe since its “discovery” in 1981. HIV stands for human immunodeficiency virus and is caused by Lentivirus, which is a subgroup of Retroviridae (Douek et al. 2009). HIV is one of the more dangerous diseases known because there is currently no known cure and will infect roughly 50,000 people in the United States alone each year (CDC 2016). HIV is a terrible disease that has taken the world by storm. While originally only known as a homosexual disease, that false perception has been shattered as the disease continued to spread. The origin of HIV is not entirely known, though there is strong evidence to support the idea that it originated in a chimpanzee in West Africa. They

There are many different theories about how humans acquired Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), but the CDC and WHO agree that it was likely passed from a chimp to a human in the 1930s or 1940s while the humans were hunting. The humans became exposed to chimpanzee blood during slaughter and the blood contained Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV). SIV doesn’t infect humans and HIV doesn’t infect chimpanzees, but it is thought that eventually SIV adapted to HIV in humans. (I Know HIV, 2010)

HIV is a virus that affects the immune system by destroying the white blood cells. After living with HIV and not treating it, it can completely ruin the immune systems and then becomes Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. The virus is spread through the contact of bodily fluids, which means it can be contract in a variety of different ways. Some of the most common ways are sexual contact, sharing needles, or blood transfusions. This virus carries a heavy burden in Africa because it “originated in central Africa” (Pepin, 6). Also, due to the culture and beliefs of the African people, HIV/AIDS spread rapidly in Africa. There were a plethora of contributions to the AIDS epidemic, sex

The outbreak of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) was first recognized in the 1980s in the

Further, a strain of SIV discovered in a chimpanzee in 1991 that was identical to HIV lead researchers to conclude HIV came from chimpanzees (Levy, 1993) and was determined those who died from the strange infection of pneumocystis pneumonia had HIV infection (Magnus, 2009).

HIV stands for (Human Immunodeficiency Virus). This virus causes AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome), and it means the person is in the most advanced stages of HIV infection. AIDS HIV/AIDS deteriorates a person 's ability to fight infections. It can be transmitted through direct contact of a mucous member or the bloodstream with a bodily fluid containing HIV, such as blood, semen, vaginal fluid, preseminal fluid and breast milk and through unprotected sex and needle sharing. An HIV test checks, finding. Medications may subdue the virus and delay the onset of AIDS. HIV/AIDS has had a great impact on society, both as an illness and as a source clear-sightedness. HIV/AIDS cannot be cured but it can be treated, it requires a medical diagnosis, and lab tests. (According to 2005-2015 WebMD, “HIV/AIDS Health Center”)