HIV/AIDS: The Children’s Struggle Behind it All
Imagine being an eleven year old kid in South Africa. There’s no time for school, to have fun, or enjoy life. There’s barely enough food to share among the family. All there’s time for is to get up at dawn to work in the fields, tame the animals, and water the crops. Sadly, this is reality of a child’s life in South Africa who has one parent or both infected with a life capturing disease known as Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). In worse scenarios many children have already had both their parents taken by this virus. HIV is a disease that affects numerous people worldwide. Of the HIV/AIDS infected population, more than three-fourths lives in Sub-Saharan Africa with South Africa having the highest diagnosed population. The children of these sick relatives will be eternally affected by this epidemic since many of the kids will fail to complete their education. HIV/AIDS is thought to affect many adults, but most do not truly recognize the hardships and burdens it places upon the children of the diagnosed.
HIV-1 is the most prominent found type of HIV originating from chimpanzees in Central Africa. Research shows the earliest detection of HIV came from the lymph nodes of a man from the Belgian Congo. This proposed the suggestion that the disease might’ve transverse from the chimpanzees over to humans as early as 1959. This is all said to have begun when hunters began slaughtering innocent chimps as food nourishment. However, it wasn’t until 1982 when the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) distributed information that five citizens had died from an unusual and strange form of pneumonia which was believed to become known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Then...
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... the safety and effects of any HIV/AIDS drug or vaccine. The drugs must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) which could take years. A vaccine that has been created by the FDA that is said to be able to treat HIV is known as Varivax. Varivax is a vaccine for chicken pox administered to people as young as one year of age (AIDS info Drug Database).
Although HIV/AIDS isn’t curable yet, there are many solutions that are being discovered. The solutions need to be enacted because children serve to have their childhood. They deserve to be able to enjoy it and not having to take on adult responsibilities at such a young age. More awareness needs to be brought forth about the effects of this disease. Yes, people have lost their lives because of disease; however children lose their childhood and potentially some of the happiest memories they’ll ever create.
“Clinically, the HIV infected adolescents present as physically stunted individuals, with delayed puberty and adrenarche. Mental illness and substance abuse are important co-morbidities” (Naswa, 2010). Naswa, 2010 also reports that adolescences with HIV have a higher susceptibility rate to contract STD’s that the average individual due to the thinner lining of mucus in the ovaries at this stage of their development. The stigma of living with HIV is also a factor for her psychosocial development. The fact that she contracted this disease from her father further contributes to emotional trauma.
...cused of being patient zero and the one who purposely and knowingly infected as many as 250 men a year on both sides of the Atlantic was nothing but one of the many wrong hypotheses made in this process of finding the origin of the HIV/AIDS virus. The fact that he had single handedly started the epidemic, today is largely discredited by most scientists. With time computer models estimated that the first human infection occurred around 1930, give or take 20 years. The earliest known infection of an identified human dates back to 1959 which was found in a plasma sample taken from an adult male living in the Belgian Congo. Many assumptions and hypotheses were made and a human eating a chimp seems to be the likeliest form the infection occurred.
2) Moore, J. (2004). The puzzling origins of AIDS: Although no one explanation has been universally accepted, four rival theories provide some important lesson. American Scientist, 92(6), 540-547. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/stable/27858482
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was first recognized as a new disease in 1981 when increasing numbers of young homosexual men succumbed to unusual opportunistic infections and rare malignancies (Gallant49).During this time, many people were contacting this disease because it was not discovered yet and people did not have knowledge about it.Scientists believe HIV came from a particular kind of chimpanzee in Western Africa. Humans contracted this disease when they hunted and ate infected animals. A first clue came in 1986 when a morphologically similar but antigenically distinct virus was found to cause AIDS in patients in western Africa (Goosby24). During this time, scientists had more evidence to support their claim about this disease. Once discovered this disease was identified as a cause of what has since become one of the most devastating infectious diseases to have emerged in recent history (Goosby101). This disease was deadly because it was similar to the Black Death, it was killing majority of the population. Since its first identification almost three decades ago, the pandemic form of HIV-1 has infected at least 60 million people and caused more than 25 million deaths ...
Even though AIDS is heavily researched, its origin still remains a partial mystery. It is know that HIV is a zoonosis, a human disease acquired from animals. The virus evolved from a Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV): a type of slow virus found naturally in monkeys and apes which, while not harming the host, produces diseases in other primates (Caldwell 97).
Over 33 million people around the world have AIDS (“Global Statistics.”). The disease, caused by the virus HIV, attacks the immune system, which is meant to protect your body from illness. Currently, there is no cure for AIDS, and 25 million have lost their lives due to it. AIDS is a serious issue affecting many people around the world today as they struggle with the disease, research for medicines, and attempt to reduce new infections
I am positive; the simplest statement suddenly carries a huge weight when the words HIV or AIDS are followed right after. In the 1980’s HIV meant AIDS and AIDS meant a rapid and awful death. Death always seemed to be the end result in a world where we did not understand the disease that seemed to come from nowhere but was killing at an expedited rate. Thirty plus years later there is still no cure but there is now hope. Having HIV or AIDS is no longer an immediate death sentence. People infected with the virus can live a long and relatively normal life (2).
Psychiatric Interviews for Teaching by the University of Nottingham displays to the audience the process and the realities of a personal interview with the patients. The process begins with “taking the history,” in other words, finding out the patient’s history of the ongoing illness. During the interviews, one starts to realize whether or not the patient is aware of his/her sickness. The video for Mania and Psychosis, both males believed that they were not ill, on the other hand, the lady in Depression knew she was sick and wanted help from the doctor. The harsh realities are displayed upon the actual doctor and the patient themselves. For example: after seeing the three videos, the young man in Psychosis seemed normal to me; however, he believed that the secret service of England was after him. The young man is roughly two years older than I am. His demeanor presented a very
A country once in denial now has it’s South African political leaders addressing the disease that is slowing killing their population The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) which evolves into acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is affecting South Africa socially as well as economically. This disease is also leaving over a million and a half children orphaned. Most of these children are not only orphaned but living with the virus as well.
Drug abuse has been a hot topic for our society due to how stimulants interfere with health, prosperity, and the lives of others in all nations. All drugs have the potential to be misapplied, whether obtained by prescription, over the counter, or illegally. Drug abuse is a despicable disease that affects many helpless people. Majority of those who are beset with this disease go untreated due to health insurance companies who neglect and discriminate this issue. As an outcome of missed opportunities of treatments, abusers become homeless, very ill, or even worst, death.
There are four letters, that when put together can spell out a lifetime of agony, despair, prejudice and constant indignation; AIDS. Over the years the disease has been called GRID, Gay Cancer and finally came the name that is commonly accepted today, AIDS. Multiple theories are present as to the origin of this deadly virus, all of them are unique but no matter what the origin or name, AIDS is a terrible epidemic that needs to come to an end. People have suffered long enough, and too many people have been discriminated against something that’s not entirely their fault. The medicine for AIDS only prolongs the inevitable, and suffering of the poor people cursed with the disease. AIDS as of now is a death sentence and it currently has no cure; it targets people of every race, age, and gender from all walks of life but despite AIDS only being been around for less than a century, it has managed to leave an immense impact on American history, individuals, society and culture.
It is deeply alarming that ignoring mental health is systematically ignored as an important part of health promotion. This is shocking because, in theory, mental health is recognized as an important component of health, the close link between physical and mental health is recognized, and it is generally known that physical and mental health share many of the same social, environmental and economic components. We know that facilities dedicated to those with mental health problems are more vulnerable to the resources of physical diseases in many parts of the world, and it is essential that mental health promotion should not be equally affected
AIDS is a disease that is transmitted easily through unprotected sexual intercourse, sharing of needles, blood transfusion, and childbirth. Without proper knowledge and equipment, it is very difficult to prevent the spread of AIDS. Ever since the illness was discovered thirty years ago, it has taken the lives of thirty million people and affected the lives of many, many more. The AIDS pandemic has been and still is most severe in third-world countries in sub-Saharan Africa. It has impacted the economies of entire nations by crippling and killing individuals in the most productive years of their lives (“HIV/AIDS”). AIDS greatly influences the government sector, agricultural sector, private corporations, and individual households. Among those impacts, the impact on households is the most significant and severe. This paper will discuss the various ways AIDS affects families and the most effective ways of solving this issue.
The emergence of HIV/AIDS is viewed globally as one of the most serious health and developmental challenges our society faces today. Being a lentivirus, HIV slowly replicates over time, attacking and wearing down the human immune system subsequently leading to AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) at which point the affected individual is exposed to life threatening illnesses and eventual death. Despite the fact that a few instances of this disease have been accounted for in all parts of the world, a high rate of the aforementioned living with HIV are situated in either low or medium wage procuring nations. The Sub-Saharan region Africa is recognized as the geographic region most afflicted by the pandemic. In previous years, people living with HIV or at risk of getting infected did not have enough access to prevention, care and treatment neither were they properly sensitized about the disease. These days, awareness and accessibility to all the mentioned (preventive methods, care etc.) has risen dramatically due to several global responses to the epidemic. An estimated half of newly infected people are among those under age 25(The Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic). It hits hard as it has no visible symptoms and can go a long time without being diagnosed until one is tested or before it is too late to manage.
No cure or vaccine now exists for AIDS. Many of those infected with HIV may not