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HIV/AIDS Are you sure you escaped them?

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Actually, HIV is one of the worst diseases that our world has met. Around 35.3 million people in the world are living with this everyday, risking their own life in the process. Most of you will say: That’s okay, I’m OK with that!. But, be careful, this disease could affect you tomorrow, and let’s see if you would be OK with it. To prevent all of you from Human Immunodeficiency Virus, read the following article.

1. HOW ARE MY FELLOW DISEASE PARTNERS? Well, we could say that Africa is the winner in the HIV infections contest.

South Africa is the country with the highest rate with people living with HIV/AIDS, no more than 5,600,000 people in it. Second, Nigeria, with 3,300,000 people! And finally, in third place, India, with 2,400,000 people! As we can appreciate in the following photo, poor countries tend to be the first ones in the infection records. Not everyone has the same health system, but prevention continues being the best way to keep diseases away, to both, poor and rich countries.

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South Africa Nigeria India Kenya Mozambique Tanzania Uganda United States Zimbabwe Russia

5,600,000 3,300,000 2,400,000 1,500,000 1,400,000 1,400,000 1,200,000 1,200,000 1,200,000 980,000

2. HOW SHOULD I AVOID IT?

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Preventing HIV/ AIDS is the best way to escape from its claws without being affected. If you don’t take these cautions, there’s a high rate of you getting Human Immunodeficiency Virus. For example, you can simply avoid having sex. Sexual relationships are the most common way of passing HIV/AIDS. Don’t forget to use anticonception methods, it can also avoid you getting this virus. You can also get HIV if you don’t wash or clean well your personal stuff. Using new and clean needles is very important too, and there are posts in which you can give your old needles and take new ones. And it’s better if you don’t share personal things with infected people, such as water glasses.

DON’T SHARE NEEDLES WITH OTHER PEOPLE, TRY USING A NEW ONE

3. LET’S FIGHT HIV, FRIENDS! During story, humans have fought HIV/AIDS frequently, but, how did we start noticing and fighting it? Let’s see!

Uh? What's happening?

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In the summer of 1981,Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report included two reports about how rare infections were affecting gay men in New York and California. Later, scientists take notice of the actual Human Inmunodeficiency Virus, and confirming that the virus affects the human body by attacking the inmune system's cells and letting other diseases affect the person.

Uh-Oh, what's this?

In 1986 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first antiviral drug zidovudine as a preventive way. After 1991, several nucleoside analogs were added to the army against HIV/AIDS. During this period, some advances in recognising the disease were made, like that it's a war of attrition, instead of a host of 10 years in the body.

Hey, still not a cure!

In our days, there's still no cure for HIV/AIDS, but our scientists have developed some ways to treat the infected people. HIV deaths have experimented an important change, because actually there's a low rate of people dying of it.

Preventing systems help people to avoid it, and to assure that the infected people don't suffer as much as in the past. There's still a long road to drive!

4. HOW ARE WE HELPING? Did you think that everyone here forgets and leaves people with HIV alone? Ha! You should read about it and correctly, because that’s not right!

Actually, World leaders donated 12 million dollars in threatening for infected people with HIV, TB and Malaria! Ministry of Health and Social Services (MoHSS) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are right now going from door to door in Namibia testing everyone in every family of HIV, and spending their time in threatening correctly their clients. If they find anyone infected, they send him/her to an hospital and treat this person.

“When I was a young medical student in Mumbai, telling a patient they had HIV was like reading them a death sentence: they had little hope of long and healthy life. Today, that is thankfully no longer the case.”

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This was said by a blogger in India, Dr. Rajat Goyal, in the web page ONE, as a guest. And finally, we can say: “Nearly 10 million people now have access to antiretroviral drugs globally, and AIDS-related deaths have fallen sharply” with the pride of having saved million of lives in the world, lives that could have been you, or me.

5. PHOTO GALLERY

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BY MERCEDES TEJERÍA MARTÍNEZ