AIDS Crisis

There are a few things I want people to understand about AIDS. First, I want people to understand the devastating impact it is currently having on the world, in particularly Africa. Second, I want people to understand the nature of AIDS and hopefully break down the stigma that the majority of people have towards it and to the people that have it. Finally I will discuss what we (globally) are doing to end the AIDS crisis.

The first reported cases of AIDS came in 1981 when it was discovered in several gay men in the United States. AIDS or Acquired Immune Deficiency Virus was at the time labeled a homosexual virus as the only reported cases initially were of gay men. It would shortly be discovered that this was not the case, and that AIDS was indiscriminate of its victims. Cases started emerging of transmission through blood transfusions, birth, and sex to name a few. Once the virus was reported it was discovered that the virus may have had roots going back as far as 1959. By 1982, cases of AIDS had emerged in 14 different nations around the world.

Fast-forward 26 years later and the latest report released in December of 2007 by UNAIDS (Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS) reports that there are a total of 33.2 million people currently living with HIV/AIDS of which nearly 50 percent are women, and 2.5 million are children under the age of fifteen. In the last two to three years the reported cases of AIDS has continued to increase but has also leveled off a little only because the newly reported cases (2.5 million in 2007) are balanced by the number of AIDS related deaths (2.1 million in 2007). Of the reported 33.2 million cases of AIDS in 2007, 22.5 million (more than two thirds) of those were in Sub-Saharan Africa, and account for 76 percent of all AIDS related deaths. Of the 22.5 million AIDS infected people in Sub-Saharan Africa 61 percent of them are women. I do not like spitting out a bunch of statistics, and it is especially difficult for me because these numbers represent people who are, and have mothers and fathers and children just like myself, but I think it is necessary so that we understand the urgency in the matter at hand especially in the highest affected areas like Africa. After looking at these numbers it is not hard to understand why countries in Africa which are the greatest affected are in the state they currently are in. It is hard to have a thriving economy when such a vast number of people are no longer healthy enough to work and you can see the progression of the break down from there affecting all other areas of life socially, politically, and economically. It is hard to see anything positive here, but there is good news in that we can help and there are ways of controlling AIDS so that people can lead relatively normal lives. I’ll discuss that more later in following posts.

Sources: http://data.unaids.org/pub/EPISlides/2007/2007_epiupdate_en.pdf, http://fohn.net/history-of-aids/