Question

What factors inhibited the early war against acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)? Do you believe the AIDS outbreak could have been stopped? Why or why not? What role does advocacy play in the film? How much publicity does HIV/AIDS receive today? What’s the story of HIV/AIDS in the 21st century? Explain.

Answer 1

All over the world the prevalence of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) has became a stumbling stone in progress of human civilization and is a huge concern for people worldwide.

Since the identification of the HIV in the early 1980s, much has been learned about how the virus is transmitted and how it attacks the body's immune system and causes the AIDS. The HIV/AIDS epidemic has grown on an unprecedented scale in the last three decades since it was first recognized, and now it is considered a global crisis. The countries, which have to fight with the concentrated or generalized HIV/AIDS epidemic, are facing enormous socio-economic problems. The first case was identified in 1981, acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) has grown into an epidemic that has taken approximately 500,000 lives in the United States alone. The Joint united nations Programme on HIV/AIDS estimates that at the end of 2002 there were 42 million people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide. During 2002, AIDS caused the deaths of an estimated 3.1 million people. At this time, women were increasingly affected by AIDS; it was estimated that women comprised approximately 50 percent or 19.2 million of the 38.6 million adults living with HIV or AIDS worldwide. No cure has been found, although existing treatment employing multiple drugs has made some gains in prolonging life and reducing pain. Despite the limits of medical science, however, much is known about the disease. It is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Transmitted by bodily fluids from person to person, HIV invades certain key blood cells that are needed to fight off infections. HIV replicates, spreads, and destroys these host cells. When the body's immune system becomes deficient, the person becomes AIDS-symptomatic, which means the person develops infections that the body can no longer ward off. Ultimately, a person with AIDS dies from diseases caused by other infections. The leading killer is a form of pneumonia.

HIV/AIDS is a burning public health issue all over the world. The HIV disease is a leading cause of deaths worldwide and the number one cause of death in Africa. HIV primarily affects those in their most productive years; about half of new infections are among those below the age 25 years. Most of the fear surrounding AIDS has to do with its most common form of transmission: sexual behavior. The virus can be passed through any behavior that involves the exchange of blood, semen, or vaginal secretions. Anal intercourse is the highest-risk activity, but oral or vaginal intercourse is dangerous too. Thus, federal health authorities recommend using a condom—yet they caution that condoms are not 100 percent effective; condoms can leak, and they can break. Highly accurate HIV testing is widely available, and often advisable, since infected people can feel perfectly healthy. Although the virus can be contracted immediately upon exposure to it, symptoms of full-blown AIDS may take up to ten years to appear. The women, especially younger women, are biologically more susceptible to HIV. As a result, young women are twice more likely to become infected with HIV than that of male globally.

In addition to sexual behavior, only a few other means of HIV transmission exist. Sharing unsterilized needles used in drug injections is one way, owing to the exchange of blood on the needle, and thus intravenous drug users are an extremely high-risk group. Several cities have experimented with programs that offer free, clean needles. These programs have seen up to a 75 percent reduction in new HIV cases. Receipt of donations of blood, semen, organs, and other human tissue can also transmit HIV, although here, at least, screening methods have proved largely successful. Childbirth and breast feeding are also avenues of transmission, and thus children of HIV-positive mothers may be at risk.

The prevalence of HIV disease levels can vary considerably between different countries and between different populations within a country as well as globally. It is associated with much more variation in socio-demographic and health factors than is admitted in broad statements and projections about pandemics based on crude epidemiological data. Differences between cultures and countries in terms of contraceptive use, educational attainment, circumcision practices and access to treatment for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) can therefore explain much of the observed variation in HIV prevalence levels. These differences may relate to and reflect standards and styles of living, especially in family life, rearing of children, adolescence and occupational preferences. This diversity is usually attributable to a range of socioeconomic, biological, demographic and behavioral factors. The medical facts about HIV and AIDS are especially relevant to the law. Unless exposed in one of a few very specific ways, most people have nothing to fear. Casual contact with people who are infected is safe. Current medical knowledge is quite strong on this point: no one is known to have caught the virus by sitting next to, shaking the hand of, or breathing the same air as an infected person. For this reason, U.S. law has moved to protect the civil rights of HIV-positive and AIDS-symptomatic persons. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. 794 (1994) prohibits discrimination against otherwise qualified disabled individuals, including individuals with a contagious disease or an infection such as HIV or AIDS. The AIDS quilt, on display in Washington, D.C., has become a well-known symbol of support for victims of AIDS and their families. Families and supporters of victims of AIDS create a panel to commemorate that person's life and that panel is joined with others from around the country to create the quilt.

The AIDS epidemic could have been prevented in the mid-80s if appropriate public health measures had been implemented, and the dissemination of misleading information and the efforts of the hierarchy of organized medicine to block implementation are responsible for the spread of this disease.

A silent killer has taken our country and the world hostage in the last nineteen years. Every day more people are sentenced to a death penalty. Since 1981 until September 30, 1993, over five hundred thousand people, regardless of age or sexual preference, have become prisoners of war. Over two hundred thousand of those inmates have been tortured and brutally murdered. Though it was just in the past ten years that the nation decided to take action among the serial killer. This mass murderer has no face but it does have a spine-chilling name, AIDS. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome has become a household name in the United States and there is not a day that goes by that the world does not hear it. The public has heard all the frightening statistics and the gruesome details of the disease. Though many people are uneducated on the origins of the AIDS virus. There have been numerous speculations and harsh rumors on the history of AIDS but, sadly, the public still blames the homosexual community for spreading it throughout the United States. However, in the year 1995, it is no longer a "homosexual" disease but a disease for every person who walks this earth. Throughout the early years of the AIDS virus, 1980 until 1985, two major influences helped to allow AIDS to become an epidemic: homosexual profiteers and the federal government. The mass media ignored AIDS until the death tolls were too high to avoid the sensitive topic. The media, like the government, felt that America was not ready to cover stories of homosexuals and their sexual behavior. Though one must wonder if the crisis would be different today if the people had been better informed about AIDS in the early stages of the epidemic. The origin of AIDS is quite mysterious to the general public. Ignorant rumors about AIDS have materialized in the last decade, but none are close to the truth.

AIDS is no longer a plague or a panic, thanks to a variety of advances: better treatments for HIV mean that it rarely progresses to AIDS. People who get tested can find out their status sooner, thanks to better tests, and people seem to have better awareness of the dangers of unprotected sex.

AIDS is just an advanced stage of HIV infection. Today, only about 2% of people with HIV have AIDS. But in the 1980s and 1990s, people with HIV tended to be diagnosed only when their infection was more advanced.

We have all the tools we need to make HIV go away. But not enough people get tested, either because they don’t know they should, or because they can’t access the tests. Those that do find out they’re positive sometimes can’t or won’t take the medicine that keeps the virus in check.

That’s why public health groups, including the government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, run lots of initiatives to bring testing to more people, make medications more affordable and available, and improve people’s understanding of the disease. In that spirit, here are some things you might not know about HIV, but probably should.

HIV is manageable with timely, consistent treatment: the amount of virus in an infected person’s blood can drop to undetectable levels, and the life expectancy of someone with HIV can be as long as that of someone without.

But not everybody gets on board with the treatment regimen. Young people don’t like to take medicine when they’re healthy. Some would-be patients are afraid of the drugs’ side effects, but other factors contribute to the dismal percentage of people with HIV infections who are getting proper care: things like poverty, racial disparities, and homelessness. “If you have services to support you such as housing, you’ll take your meds better than if you didn’t.