Some Things We All Need to Know About

the Prevention of

HIV/AIDS

Written by Megan Mallory

Some statistics on the growth of AIDS are that at the end of 2003, about 37.8 million people (35.7 million adults and 2.1 children younger than 15) were living with HIV/AIDS. About two-thirds of these people live in Sub-Saharan Africa, and another twenty percent live in Asia and the Pacific. Across the world, 11 out of every 1000 adults (15 to 49) are estimated to be HIV infected. In Sub-Saharan Africa, about 7.5 percent of adults are HIV positive. Women are reported to make up nearly half of all people worldwide with HIV/AIDS. 4,800,000 new HIV cases occurred worldwide in 2003. That’s about 14,000 cases each day! More than 95 percent of these occur in developing countries. Every day 1,700 children under the age of fifteen, and people aged fifteen to twenty four became infected with the virus; Every 6 seconds, someone new is infected with HIV.

            More than twenty million people have died since the first AIDS case was discovered in 1981 (only 22 years ago!) In 2003 alone, 2.9 million people, including 490,000 children, died around the world from HIV/AIDS related illnesses.

When AIDS was first recognized in 1981, patients we not expected to live for more than a year or two. Since then, doctors and scientists have discovered effective drugs that can help many people infected with HIV live longer, healthier, and happier lives. Recently, in Durban, South Africa a team of scientists from the United States on July 13, 2004 that the drug nevirapine can greatly reduce the mother-to-infant transmission of HIV up to a year after the medicine is taken, around the time of birth! This medication worked so well that the mother of the infant could even breastfeed without transmitting the disease. Some other forms of treatment used to prevent HIV are called antiretroviral drugs. Twenty different kinds of this drug are approved for treating HIV. Although these drugs can prevent symptoms, they cannot get rid of the virus forever. There have been no surviving cases, which make this disease terrifying. So far, the longest surviving case of HIV is Magic Johnson, who goes through hundreds of drugs every week. He has to wash his hands often, and obviously has to watch what he eats very carefully. Doing simple things like this can not only prevent yourself from catching colds and viruses, but it also protects someone with HIV from getting AIDS. HIV/AIDS is the fastest growing virus in the world. Because there is no cure, the world has gone through many fundraisers and donations to try and find a cure to stop it. With the fast-growing technology and media that the world is experiencing, hopefully we will find a cure in the near future.