AIDS IN AFRICAN AMERICAN

African American Correlation with HIV



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African American Correlation with HIV

Introduction

When AIDS was first recognized in 1981, the general assumption was that this deadly disease was essentially limited to homosexuals and West Africans. Today, however, HIV and AIDS have become a pandemic. By 2007, more than 33 million people worldwide, 60 percent of them women, had been infected. Roughly 3 million people die every year from AIDS. Although Africa remains the epicenter of the AIDS pandemic, the disease is rapidly growing in China, India, Russia, UK and the Caribbean, Eastern and Central Europe, and elsewhere. India, with more than 2.5 million cases of HIV, ranks second in the world, behind South Africa. Homosexuals, heterosexuals, bisexuals, intravenous drug users, recipients of infected blood transfusions, and children are victims of AIDS (Adler, 2007, pp.1743-7).

HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is probably as old as human society. It is generally accepted that HIV evolved from the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) found in chimpanzees in southwestern Africa. It is believed that individuals acquired the disease from exposure to blood in the process of handling the meat of a chimpanzee that carried the virus. Compared with other infectious diseases, HIV/AIDS—while devastating—is transmitted in very specific ways and is thus more controllable (Blanchard, 2008, pp.1496-502).

The virus is passed from one individual to another through the exchange of bodily fluids during sexual intercourse, through blood transfusions, from mother to fetus, through intravenous drug use, and through other activities in which infected blood is transmitted from one person to another. Early symptoms of HIV infection include chronic fatigue or weakness, noticeable and sustained weight loss, extensive and persistent swelling of the lymph glands, routine diarrhea, and sustained deterioration of the central nervous system (Barone, 2004, pp.21-31). These conditions make HIV-positive patients vulnerable to contracting many other infectious diseases, especially tuberculosis.

The paper examines the AIDS population in United States keeping in view the change sin demographics and the impact on healthcare. The aim is to highlight what changes have the demographic shift brought to the disease prevention and healthcare challenges.

HIV/AIDS

HIV stands for “human immunodeficiency virus”, the virus that causes AIDS. AIDS stands for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. HIV attacks and disables the immune system, the body's natural line of defense, stripping it of its capacity to repel disease-causing organisms. AIDS is considered fatal, although many people currently live with HIV/AIDS as a result of the development of powerful antiviral medications (Bartee, 2004, pp.175-180). For people in industrialized nations like the United Kingdom and Canada, Western European nations, Japan, and the like, HIV/AIDS may become a chronic but controllable state, like diabetes. But for many millions in developing nations, where medications are too expensive or difficult to deliver, HIV/AIDS may remain a death sentence.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the impact that race, gender, socioeconomics, and stress may have on the health outcomes of African American women. An understanding of this complex issue was gained by providing African American women with the ...