Aids in American Youth

Aids in American Youth

There are more than 40 million people in the world with the disease known as AIDS(Bender 6). There are about 1 million people in America recorded to have the disease(Carasso). While anybody can get AIDS the people who are at the highest risk are youth between under the age of 20 years old(Carasso). This epidemic which came about in the early 80’s has become a deadly problem in our world today. When AIDS came about it is understood that it was only a gay disease in the 80’s, which would cause for this disease to spread rapidly. With the gay community not being the most acknowledge group of people in this decade no one cared that it was happening to them. The disease could have been drastically reduced if people would have known this virus wasn’t passed by, sex nor was it a gay disease only. In fact the disease was initially known as GRID (Gay Related Immune Disorder). In the 80’s almost no one used condoms, which made it easy for the transmission, especially when people didn’t know it was sexually translated. Aids has become a problem that every country is faced with, especially Africa with 1 out of 10 being effected with this virus. Some countries in Africa have nearly 50% of its population effected with this disease. The virus of AIDS could have been reduced drastically if people wanted to face the fact that it is sexually transmitted.

The disease of AIDS can be passed from person to person several ways. The first, and the most common is through sexual intercourse. Sexual intercourse is by far the greatest risk for contracting the disease. The reason that sex is the most common is because of the friction caused by having sex. For the most part women are more likely to contract the disease, in fact they have a 3 out of 4 chance to catch the disease to a males, 1 out of 4. The other major way, and probably the second leading way to contract the Virus is through sharing a drug needle. Using drugs such as Heroin which calls for an injection of a liquid substance directly into a vein of a person can cause a major transition of blood from one person to another (DeCarlo, Lurie AIDS123).