REDUCTION PLAN

STI Transmission-Reduction Plan

STI Transmission-Reduction Plan

Introduction

Sexually transmitted infections (STI) continue to be a major public health problem in populations across the world. Effective medical treatments for non-viral STI exist and epidemiologists have produced many studies describing how these infections move through populations. Nevertheless, rates of STI incidence, including HIV, remain high. Sexual behavior change key to STI control and prevention and most public health programs concentrate on changing this behavior, especially the rate of sexual partner acquisition and condom use.

The important question then becomes, how do we know if these interventions are successful? Or, how do we measure sexual behavior change? As one might well imagine, measuring sexual behaviors is fraught with difficulties (beyond the normal complications of self-reports of any kind) due to its sensitive and essentially unobservable nature. The purpose of this paper is to bring STI Transmission-Reduction Plan. In this paper, we are going to bring reduction plan for reducing HIV transmission (Latkin, 2008).

Background

According to the CDC (2011), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is the virus which can lead to acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). This infection was first recognized in 1981. One of the primary ways in which HIV is transmitted is through sexual activity. HIV destroys specific blood cells, CD4+T cells, which are important in helping to fight diseases. Many people have no symptoms when initially infected with HIV while others may have flu-like STI Testing in the SUNY System 16 symptoms a few weeks after being infected. People who have HIV may feel and appear healthy for many years.

During the early stages of untreated HIV infection it can be associated with cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, liver disease and cancer. Since the recognition of this disease medications have been developed which can slow down or limit the disease's destruction of the immune system, improve the health of people who have HIV and reduce the likelihood that they will transmit the disease to others. These medications are costly, have potential side effects, must be taken daily for the rest of the infected person's life and need to be monitored carefully. The late staged of HIV infection is AIDS.

This is when a person's immune system is severely damaged and may not be able to fight diseases and certain cancers. While the medications can improve the health of those with the disease and can slow the progression from HIV to AIDS there is no current cure for HIV infection. In 2006, an estimated 1,106,400 people in the United States were living with HIV. In this same year there were an estimated 56,300 new people infected with HIV. In 2008 the estimated number of deaths of people with an AIDS diagnosis was 16,088. New York State reported 201,871 cumulative cases of AIDS from the beginning of when this epidemic was tracked to December 2009 ((Wagstaff, 2009).

Method

This research is going to utilize the qualitative method of research. The data in the study has been collected through both a primary and secondary methodology and both have been used to ...