HIV/AIDS EPIDEMIOLOGY

Epidemiology Has Made the Understanding Of and Policy Response to HIV/AIDS

Epidemiology Has Made the Understanding Of and Policy Response to HIV/AIDS

Introduction

AIDS is the disease that develops as a result of progressive destruction of the immune system (body's defenses), caused by a virus discovered in 1983 and named the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) (Bhargava & Booysen 2010, p. 1). The word AIDS comes from the initials of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, which is the inability of the immune system to fight infections and other pathological processes. AIDS is not a result of an inherited disorder, but the result of exposure to HIV infection, which facilitates the development of new opportunistic infections, tumors and other processes. The virus remains dormant and destroys a certain type of lymphocytes, cells that defend the body's immune system.

Background

Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS AIDS in Castilian and English) is a sexually transmitted disease that is mostly due to a mutation or change in a virus itself a kind of African monkey, who became human blood and there has adapted and reproduced. There are cases, subsequent studies of African people who were infected 40 or 50 years ago, when neither the disease nor the virus were described to perfection. After an initial wave of fear that they could be infected by such a simple handshake, it turned out that it could infect only on certain routes: sexual intercourse and blood contact (Bhargava & Booysen 2010, p. 1). Since then, more than 70 million people with HIV have been infected, of whom now over 30 million are succumbed to the disease. Today there are 39.5 million people worldwide who have the virus. It is an average of every 6 seconds, a new infection every 10 seconds a person dies from it. 90% of those infected live in developing countries; Africa is by far the most affected continent.The short history of the disease is punctuated by several major events. After the first cases described in 1981 among homosexual men in 1983, Luc Montagnier discovered the causative agent, HIV (human immunodeficiency virus). In 1983, there was also the AIDS epidemic in heterosexuals, and in 1985, countries had recorded cases in all continents.

Six years after its detection in 1987, it created various agencies to try to contain the rapid spread. Also on this date, the Food and Drug Administration U.S. FDA approved the first drug to treat AIDS. Antiretroviral triple therapy was not available until 1996. Currently, we investigate the development of a vaccine to halt the virus.

Discussion

Transmission

The three main transmission routes are parental (blood transfusions, needle sharing among drug users, needle exchange intramuscular), sexual (either heterosexual or homosexual male) and mother-child (transplacental, before birth, in at birth or through or after breastfeeding).

Less frequently reported cases of HIV transmission in the health care (patient care staff and vice versa), and in other circumstances are when a person gets in touch through various body fluids (blood, semen or other) (Coovadia 2004, p. ...