AIDS: overview

In 2009, World Health organization (WHO) estimated that 33 million people worldwide have been infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Since the beginning of the "HIV epidemic in the 1980s, more than 25 million people have died of HIV-related opportunistic diseases Seventy-eight percent of the children in the orphanages of the Zimbabwe lost both their parents to AIDS. In the United States, more than 1 million people are living with HIV, with approximately 20% unaware of their infection. The future is bleak, as AIDS spreads to the four corners of the globe, with an increase of deaths exceeding the 1919 global flu pandemic.

Human immunodeficiency (HIV) virus

Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is diseases of the United Nations together and symptoms resulting from HIV infection. HIV primarily infects the human immune system. It blocks the production of infection-fighting T-cells. As the T-cells are destroyed, the immune system can fight is no longer infectious agents. Infections or cancers can multiply quickly. That would not happen to a person with a healthy and fully functional immune system. Essentially, people don't really die of AIDS; they die from diseases that AIDS does not allow them to fight. Once the rate of T lymphocytes in the blood drop to the criticism of low levels, a person with HIV is considered to be AIDS patients. They run a high risk of getting opportunistic infections and die. common diseases in patients with AIDS are deadly pneumonia as pneumonia, Pneumocystis carinae pneumonia (PCP) and cytomegalovirus (CMV) and rare cancers such as Kaposi's Sarcoma (KS).

Researchers believe that AIDS was started some time in the 1930s in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Africa. They believe that a similar virus found in monkeys mutated and became capable of infecting humans. When humans in the Congo butchered and ate chimpanzee Bush meat, they have contracted the new virulent disease. The first known case of AIDS has been attributed to a sample of blood plasma of a man deceased in 1959 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The virus spreads slowly in the beginning. Then, it began to spread in the United States and other countries of the world, which starts the pandemic. Initially, the disease was a mystery. In the 1980s, a few gay men in New York and California were Descendu with KS, a rare form of cancer has previously only found that patients with an immune system removed. The experts were perplexed and helpless. In 1981, 121 people have died of the mysterious disease. Researchers from the Institut fr Pasteur France, led by Luc Montagnier, discovered the virus that caused AIDS in 1983. In 1986, human immunodeficiency (HIV) virus was universally adopted as the name of this virus.

Drug AZT

In 1985, scientists have developed the first AIDS test. The best of low-cost to allow people to know if they had been long and blood banks enabled screen donated blood. But even with a test, there is no cure for AIDS. A diagnosis of AIDS in the 1980s was a death sentence. This began to change in 1987 when the drug Azidothymidine (AZT) has been approved for human use. Although AZT does optative not completely kill the virus, it was effective to delay death. Different drugs have been developed, and in 1992, the promising combination drug therapies. The use of highly active antimicrobial (HAART) one introduces the concept of a 'cocktail' in 1995 to fight against the virus. It is still used today.

For the moment, there is still no cure for AIDS and no vaccine against HIV. The approach to the management of the aid has been double: firstly, for modifier human behaviours for those the likelihood of virus transmission originally. HIV is transmitted through three major routes: sexual contact, blood or products of blood (blood transfusions, the sharing of needles, tattoos, piercing) and mother to child (during pregnancy and birth). Sexual contact is the primary behavior that transmits HIV. Most AIDS prevention programs focus on the evolution of sexual behaviour. While preventive medicine for AIDS has not yet been achieved, in July 2010 scientists announced at a conference on AIDS to gel as a vaginal Vienna, called UN microbiology, gave women in a South African test 39% chance of "avoiding infection with HIV. In November, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that, in a study of gay men in good health, a daily dose of Truvada antimicrobial drug reduced the chances of contracting HIV by 44% subjects.

AIDS ribbon

Although the AIDS prevention is the best approach, it may be problematic. Being the primary transmission of HIV by sexual contact, all prevention programs must educate people about sexual practices. Many religious groups, conservative policies and traditional cultures, oppose the discussion of sex. The challenges for education on AIDS can be intimidating. For example, the use of the condom is proven as the most effective way to spread of HIV Cap. However, the Catholic Church considers that condoms as a form of control of births, which is forbidden by Church law. These beliefs seriously influence the effectiveness of AIDS educators in predominantly Catholic countries. In the United States, it took 12 years after the start of the pandemic before the government media campaigns explicitly encouraged the use of condoms. Even today, some spiritual leaders fundamentalists supporting the belief that AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality. These "cultural wars" about sexual values have been the message in the subject "safer sex" practices problematic in many countries.

For people already long, health care providers are trying to attack the virus directly through drug treatments. In some cases, drug therapies have made AIDS a manageable disease for long people. Thanks to constant monitoring and drug treatment, patients are able to stay in good health. However, advances of drug the not help where the pandemic is more deadly. Drugs are very expensive, cost thousands of dollars per month. AIDS is ravaging the poorest countries of the world: Africa, India, Brazil, Thailand and other countries of the third world. Simply the sick cannot afford drugs. In response to the urgent need for inexpensive drugs, some countries and organizations have used in the manufacture of generic versions of AIDS drugs. In response, pharmaceutical companies American and European have complained of patent infringement and have threatened lawsuits. Nevertheless, at the same time, some poor countries have used the threat of the production of generic drugs to force the pharmaceutical companies to lower their prices.

AIDS counseling

In the absence of a cure or vaccine, AIDS will continue to spread exponentially worldwide. Some researchers estimate that more than 60 million people will die of AIDS by 2015. Due to lack of money and resources, the poorest countries will be hardest hit by the "epidemic. Sub-Saharan Africa has more than 60% of people living with HIV and the largest number of deaths. The having more moral nations of strong aversion to open education on sexual practices, only China and countries feel, will continue to see their AIDS problems explode. The future is bleak with millions of adults and children who die, millions of orphaned children, the broken whole economies and governments under siege. Already, the world has seen plays of Botswana, South Africa, Mozambique, Lesotho and Swaziland experience population growth negative due to mortality due to AIDS. This can happen in many other countries worldwide.

Other References

ED. Berridge (Virginia) and Philip Strong, AIDS and contemporary history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; Engel, Jonathan. Epidemic: A global history of AIDS. New York: Smithsonian Books/Collins, 2006. Feldman, Douglas A. and Julia Wang Miller. The AIDS crisis: A documentary history. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998.