HIV and AIDS in Swaziland

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The Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a virus that attacks the immune system and eventually leads to its failure which allows opportunistic infections and cancers to be contracted. Today are 34 million HIV positive people worldwide. Of that, over 75 percent live in Africa. The area most infected with the HIV virus is the Sub-Saharan Region, and because of that the average life expectance in that area is less than 50 years of age. Prior to the influence of HIV that number was almost to 70 years of age. (dosomething.org) I could ramble off statistics all day, but you can tell, HIV is a serious problem in africa. No one is quite sure how the virus started, but scientists have been able to narrow its origin down to a specific type of chimpanzee in West Africa. They believe that they the chimpanzee version of the immunodeficiency virus (SIV) was somehow transmitted to humans and then it mutated into HIV. It is not known how the virus was introduced to humans, but the most excepted theory is that hunters became exposed to the infected blood of chimps and then introduced to the HIV virus. (www.theaidsinstitute.org) AIDS, which stands for "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome" is a way of describing a whole group of symptoms and diseases associated with the damage HIV does to the immune system. Here in America, being HIV positive is not necessarily a death sentence because we have drugs that can slow the virus and prevent it from becoming AIDS. In africa though, the needed medicine is vary expensive, and many infected persons might not even know they have the virus! Lack of education and a culture based on having children have made trying to rid Africa of AIDS quite a task, and we not really sure where to start.
(std.about.com)
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...-2000’s it has actually improved greatly, an official survey will be conducted in 2015 but it is predicted that percent of HIV positive people will go down because of the rapid population growth.
I think they have been doing all the right things to combat this epidemic. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. A larger number of people now understand the dangers of unprotected sex, but choose to continue the practice anyway due to cultural beliefs. The strides that have been taken to protect children is where the greatest improvements have taken place and other Sub-Saharan countries are actually beginning to look at Swaziland has done as guidelines to dealing with their own problems. HIV and AIDS is a serious problem, but its a problem that is slowly being dealt with and hopefully one day soon, will not be as prevalent in that part of the world.

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