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AIDS

Introduction

In the modern world of today, there are a lot of diseases that are widespread. One of the most serious diseases of this age is AIDS, which has taken may lives and is still incurable. AIDS, which stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, is a fatal disease. It obliterates the immune system of the human body. It is caused by a virus named HIV, the Human Immuno Deficiency Virus (Sepkowitz KA, pp. 1764-72). The HIV is an invisible virus and is not even detected under a microscope. It can remain in the body of patients for a long time in a dormant form. It can, therefore, stay in the body of the patient undetected, before showing its effects. AIDS has become a widespread disease and a lot of people, all around the world, are affected by it each year. Since the disease is still incurable, a lot of deaths occur from the disease.

Discussion

History

AIDS was clinically observed for the first time in 1981in the United States of America. Among the initial cases of the disease were a group of homosexual men who used to inject drugs. They were thought of being suffering from Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP). Soon after this, a large number of gay men developed a rare king of skin cancer named Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) (Friedman. Pp. 468-71). This was when the U.S government and the health organizations got alert and a task force was formed to monitor the outbreak of these diseases (Basavapathruni, A; Anderson. Pp. 3795-3808). There was no official name of the disease in the early days of its spread. It was referred to as the 4H disease (www.sciencemag.org). The 4Hs referred to Haitians, heroin users, hemophiliacs, and homosexuals. Later, the disease was called GRID, which stands for Gay Related Immune Deficiency (Altman LK. Pp.1). However, when the people of the health organizations determined that the disease was not related only to the gay community, it was given the name AIDS in 1982.

Transmission of AIDS

HIV is transmitted from one person to the other through three main routes: exposure to infected fluids or tissues of the body, through sexual contact, and it can pass from mother to child during pregnancy or after the delivery of the child. It can also pass on from mother to the off spring through breast feeding (Rom. Pp. 745). There is, however no risk of acquiring AIDS through ...