HIV/AIDS
AIDS stands for “acquired immunodeficiency syndrome” (a syndrome being a cluster of medical conditions).
AIDS is caused y the human immunodeficiency virus, which weakens and then destroy the body’s immune systems.
HIV/AIDS has spread in the last two decades, causing massive human death and suffering, particularly in the developing world.
There is a growing recognition that HIV/AIDS is not just a serious heath issue in developing countries, but a major development catastrophe that threatens to dismantle the social and economics achievement of the past half century.
HIV/AIDS is a fatal, sexually transmitted disease or infection (STD). Once a person is infected with HIV, he or she is infected for life.
In all but a very small proportion of cases HIV/AIDS destroys a person’s immune system.
The time between becoming HIV positive and the onset of AIDS varies.
In industrialize countries, the average time between infection with HIV and the appearance of symptoms is about 10 years, but in the poorest countries of the world, without access to proper care, the time is sometimes as short as five years.
One an HIV infected person’s immune system is severely damaged, he or she becomes vulnerable in life threatening “opportunistic infections” and is diagnosed as having AIDS.
Not everybody is equally likely to become infected with HIV and to transmitted to others.
Like other STDs, HIV is difficult to spread except by sex or other direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person.
About three quarters of HIV transmission worldwide occurs through sexual intercourse involve sexual relations between men.
The other modes of HIV transmission are transfusion of contaminated blood products, reuse of contaminated syringes by injecting drug users, infection via birth or nursing from an HIV-positive other to her child during pregnancy, childbirth, or breast feeding, and reuse of needle in medical settings.
HIV cannot be transmitted y a sneeze, a handshake or other causal catch.
HIV/AIDS
