South Africa



South Africa

Introduction

South Africa is a country that is plagued with a very unfortunate disease of HIV AIDS. There has been an epidemic which has left over 16% of the population infected. It is said that after the apartheid was when aides really spread in South Africa. To understand an epidemic in country you must first understand the country itself this is a little bit about South Africa.

Like its name says South Africa is located in the southern tip of the continent of Africa. It is slightly smaller than twice the size of Texas, consists mostly of hot days and cold nights and has rugged hills and vast plains. Some of its natural resources are gold diamonds platinum copper vanadium nickel and natural gas. Its main its main problem to the land is constant drought. As for the population of South Africa it consists of approximately 49,000,000 people and most of the age structure is from 15 to 64 years of age. The median age is 24.4 years old it is estimated that the population grows at 0.281% andi t is expected that the mediam age of death is 48.98. There is aproximatelly 5.7 million people living with HIV or AIDS. It is a country with extensive variety amd a country that has a loto f culture, due to the strugles that they had to overcome in the past. It is also a country that has been filled with civil Wars and not to mention the aparthaid. However it is a great country, in which most people live happily.

Yet for some resson there to be a great stigma surrounding AIDS in South Africa therefore there are no programs to help people get over the depressions in the initial shock that anyone might feel when they find out that they have just been given a death sentence. Do this it has been found that over 50% of the people living with HIV AIDS in South Africa have found to have some mental disorder. These mental disorders include posttraumatic stress, depression, hallucinations and these are just some of the mental disorders found.

It is said that the main reason for these mental depressions and psychotic episodes are because there are no counseling very few people registered that they had received counseling either before or after they found out the news that they were HIV-positive. Many people also wanted to have some treatment and it wasn't available for them. Furthermore it was found that the people were treated badly both them and their families are being HIV-positive. Even the health workers that helped them were treated badly. Therefore they went on to develop some sort of mental illness.

The sad part about all this is that it could've easily been different their way of life could've been made a lot easier if it was for the simple fact that they had some support available for them. Since it is shown that 70% of the people that did receive some sort of medical support and by ...