AIDS in Africa :: HIV AIDS essays research papers

The AIDS epidemic has reached disastrous proportions on the continent of Africa. Over the one-time(prenominal) two decades, two thirds of the more than 16 million people in the being infected with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, live in sub-Saharan Africa. It is now home to the largest number of people infected, with 70 per centum of the humankinds HIV infected population. The problem of this ongoing human disaster is that Africa is also the least equipped region in the world to sleep together with all the challenges posed by the HIV virus. In order run into the social and economic consequences of the disease, it is important to study the relationship between poverty, the global response, and the effectiveness of AIDS prevention, both government and grass roots. Half of the worlds cases are found in what is referred to as the AIDS belt, a chain of countries in eastern and southern Africa that is home to two percent of the global population. The main veh icle for scattering HIV throughout Africa is heterosexual person intercourse. In contrast, this is the opposite compared to the U.S. where the virus is usually transmitted through pederastic intercourse or contaminated syringes shared by drug users. anyways heterosexual intercourse, HIV transmission through transfusion and contaminated medical exam equipment is common in sub-Saharan Africa. Africans infected with HIV die oftentimes sooner aft(prenominal) diagnosing than HIV infected people in other parts of the world. In industrialized countries, the selection time after diagnosis of AIDS ranges from 9 to 26 months, but in Africa the survival time for patients is 5 to 9 months (UNAIDS 3). Factors, such as lower nettle to health care, poorer quality of health care services, poorer levels of average health and nutrition, and greater exposure to pathogens that cause infection all contribute to the shorter survival in Africa. It is difficult to stop the flood of AIDS cases in A frica because it is not even so known by researchers the factors that contribute to outstanding prevalence of the disease among heterosexuals. This diagnosis will help determine how likely it is that heterosexual epidemics will spread to Asia or the West. Even though AIDS is heavily researched, its origin suave 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, darn not harming the host, produces diseases in other primates (Caldwell 97).