PREVENTING HIV

Vaccines The Key To Preventing HIV

Vaccines The Key To Preventing HIV

Introduction

When AIDS was first recognized in 1981, the general assumption was that this deadly disease was essentially limited to homosexuals and West Africans. Today, however, HIV and AIDS have become a pandemic. By 2007, more than 33 million people worldwide, 60 percent of them women, had been infected. Roughly 3 million people die every year from AIDS. Although Africa remains the epicenter of the AIDS pandemic, the disease is rapidly growing in China, India, Russia, UK and the Caribbean, Eastern and Central Europe, and elsewhere. India, with more than 2.5 million cases of HIV, ranks second in the world, behind South Africa. Homosexuals, heterosexuals, bisexuals, intravenous drug users, recipients of infected blood transfusions, and children are victims of AIDS. (Adler 2007, 1743)

HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is probably as old as human society. It is generally accepted that HIV evolved from the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) found in chimpanzees in southwestern Africa. It is believed that individuals acquired the disease from exposure to blood in the process of handling the meat of a chimpanzee that carried the virus. Compared with other infectious diseases, HIV/AIDS—while devastating—is transmitted in very specific ways and is thus more controllable. The virus is passed from one individual to another through the exchange of bodily fluids during sexual intercourse, through blood transfusions, from mother to fetus, through intravenous drug use, and through other activities in which infected blood is transmitted from one person to another. Early symptoms of HIV infection include chronic fatigue or weakness, noticeable and sustained weight loss, extensive and persistent swelling of the lymph glands, routine diarrhea, and sustained deterioration of the central nervous system. These conditions make HIV-positive patients vulnerable to contracting many other infectious diseases, especially tuberculosis.

Discussion

Globalization is a major factor contributing to the spread of HIV/AIDS. As global tourism continues to grow and people venture to all corners of the world, they increase their risk of contracting infectious diseases. Sex tourism, which is traveling to specific countries to participate in the local sex industry, is a potent source of infectious diseases, especially HIV/AIDS. Furthermore, the growth in human trafficking and the sex trade in many parts of the world helps to spread HIV/AIDS. Poverty, ethnic conflicts, and wars facilitate the transmission of HIV/AIDS. Traditional values and perceptions of women are also important factors that assist the transmission of HIV/AIDS. (Wasserheit 2006, 201-213)

The HIV/AIDS pandemic has disastrous consequences. Eurasia, home to five out of every eight people on the planet, is an area with substantial economic power. It is also the location of countries that have nuclear weapons. Rapid increases in AIDS are likely to have profound global demographic, economic, political, and military strategic implications. Compounding the problem is widespread poverty and the unwillingness or inability of governments to adequately address the AIDS crisis. The South African government was strongly criticized at the 16th International AIDS Conference in Toronto in 2006 for its refusal to take a ...