5% in 2008" (Smith, 2009). And yet, millions of children ("The lost generation") have been left orphaned by AIDS (AIDS Weekly).
Speaking of South Africa, the AIDS Weekly story (reporting on the Jim Lehrer NewsHour story written by Ray Suarez) points out that former South Africa President Thabo Mbeki, along with his health minister, spent years spreading "misinformation about the HIV virus), which clearly was part of the problem in South Africa. A situation in which people cannot trust their elected leaders to give them the truth about a terrible disease like HIV / AIDS is unconscionable and unacceptable. But now the new South African Minister of Health, Barbara Hogan, is "trying to contain a disease which has infected one of every 6 people in the country" (Suarez, 2009).
In the David Smith article (www.guardian.co.uk) the fact that 5.2 million South Africans were living with HIV in 2008 is "widely regarded as a disastrous legacy of former president Thabo Mbeki," who has been referenced previously in this paper. Mbeki publicly questioned "the link between HIV and the disease"; and according to Smith's article, the health minister under Mbeki (Manto Tshabalala-Msimang) "mistrusted conventional anti-AIDS drugs" and instead of giving out good scientifically based information he told South Africans not to use anti-AIDS drugs and instead use a combination of "beetroot and lemon" (which has virtually no verifiable value in combating HIV or AIDS (Smith, 2009).
The good news for South Africa is that while the prevalence of HIV in children has gone down and the use of condoms among females has...
HIV / AIDS Autoimmune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) first came to the public's attention in the United States in the early 1980s. In Africa, the cities of Rwanda, Zaire, Zambia and Uganda were decimated, and cases began cropping up all over the world. In rare blood samples dating back to 1959, antibodies to HIV were detected (Crowley, 1993, p. 46), and yet the virus did not seem to become a problem until
HIV Infection A medical condition in which the immune system is destroyed by a virus called as Human Immune Deficiency Virus is known as HIV infection. The loss of immune function deteriorates the ability of the body to fight against various types of pathogenic infections (caused by harmful micro-organisms) (Quinn). The virus attacks the immune cells of the body which are basically the white blood cells (CD4 T cells) due to
A hemophiliac, young Ryan had contracted the disease through the infusion of blood resources that had long served as his life force; and then that life force, infected with HIV, failed him (Levitt & Rosenthal, 1999). As the young boy bravely faced the demons of the ravaging disease, friends, relatives and outpourings of public support and love marked his journey. Surrounded by his family, and new friends like the
But the challenges facing the current South African health minister are not simply political: "Whereas HIV subtype B, the dominant subtype in western Europe and the U.S.A., continued to spread among men who have sex with men, HIV subtype C, the dominant subtype in Africa and Asia, started spreading in the general population in South Africa in about 1988. Between 1990 and 1994, there was an exponential increase in the
Some people are of the view that, since AIDS-infected countries are financially unstable, they are unable to purchase expensive AIDS drugs which contributes to steady growth of the disease. "More than 40 million people are infected with HIV and more than 3 million have died in 2003, UNAIDS reported last week. WHO estimates more than 5 million HIV patients need anti-retroviral drugs, but fewer than 400,000 currently have access to
There are various blood tests used to detect HIV, of which the most frequently used is enzyme immunoassay, and if the presence of antibodies is detected, the blood is further tested with the Western blot method (AIDS). A test that measure the viral genes in the blood is has proven helpful in assessing treatment efficacy (AIDS). Although there is no cure for AIDS, there are a number of drugs available,
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