MORE About Aids
What is the difference between an epidemic and a pandemic?
An epidemic is an illness that occurs and spreads to many more people than would be statistically expected during a point in time. A pandemic is an epidemic that occurs over a large geographic area, usually worldwide.
What’s the difference between HIV and AIDS?
AIDS and HIV are not the same thing. A person may be infected with HIV for many years before developing AIDS, which is considered to be the last stage of the illness resulting from the HIV virus.
A person with HIV may not show any major symptoms of infection. Or, there may be flu-like symptoms in the first month or two, such as fever, headaches, or swollen glands. During this period, the person may not test positive for HIV but is able to transmit the disease.
After this initial phase, the person may be free of symptoms for many years. During this time, the virus is invading and attacking a person’s CD4 cells, often known as T-cells. T-cells are the body’s primary defense against viruses and bacteria. A person with a high T-cell count is waging a war on an internal infection. But when HIV begins to take over, T-cells are slowly defeated and destroyed. A healthy person has a T-cell count of 500–1500. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), when a person with HIV has a T-cell count at or below 200, the person is considered to have AIDS—the most severe manifestation of HIV.
With such a low T-cell count, a person is susceptible to other infections which the body might ordinarily be able to fight. In developing countries, someone with a suppressed immune system can readily contract tuberculosis, malaria, hepatitis, or other diseases commonly occurring in the environment. At that point, a person with AIDS can become a carrier of other highly communicable diseases, creating additional health risks for other people.
Why does AIDS hit the economies so hard?
Most people affected by HIV/AIDS are in the prime of life. They are the most productive workers, parents of young children, and are earning the most wages. They are the backbone of the economies of most countries.
In most developing countries, agriculture is the primary livelihood. According to UNAIDS, agriculture accounts for 70 percent of Africa’s employment. Agriculture is very labor intensive and not only provides wages for the workers but also produces food for their families. If a worker is ill, there is often no one to take his place, so the ground lies fallow. If a crop isn’t planted on time a family or an entire village may miss the harvest. The food from that harvest may have been counted on to supply food for the rest of the year. Likewise, food from each family’s plot of land may have been pooled to support the entire village, so as there is a decrease in contribution to the pooled grain bank, the amount of food available to the village may decline.
The World Bank is also tracking the impact of HIV/AIDS in other sectors of the economy and has found significant costs associated with absenteeism, lower productivity, employee turnover, increased training, and recruitment costs. And the public sector is affected in many countries by a severe shortage of teachers and health workers attributed to the AIDS crisis.
As more and more adults fall ill and die, their children are taken in by family members and others. Many families in Africa now include a large number of children. So in a typical village, there are fewer adults to work and more children to care for. Often the caretakers are older people who are no longer able to be very productive. Sometimes young people will leave the village to seek jobs in the city. But too often those young people end up in low-paying jobs or are forced into prostitution.
This cycle has contributed to famine in some countries and to widespread malnutrition.
What are some of the other effects on families and individuals in developing countries?
Having someone in the family who is ill often takes a situation that is already difficult and makes it catastrophic. If the person is the primary wage earner, the family can lose all their income and their primary source of food. Children often must stop going to school because they can no longer pay the school fees. Other results include a high risk of sexual and labor exploitation of women and children who are desperate for food and basic necessities. When a member of the family dies, funeral costs can put the family into debt. Illness and death associated with HIV/AIDS causes a downward spiral for a family, not only reducing their current income and standard of living but also robbing their future chances of moving out of poverty.
Why are there so many AIDS orphans?
An orphan is a child under the age of fifteen who has lost one or both parents. According to the 2006 report of UNAIDS, there are 12 million children in sub-Saharan Africa and more than 15 million worldwide who are orphans due to AIDS.
The number is so high because HIV-infected people are typically of childbearing age. Women are often infected by their husbands and may find out they are infected only after giving birth to a child who is obviously sick.
Published by Authentic Media, 2006. Used by permission of the author.
