AIDS stands for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. It is the most advanced stages of infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). HIV is a virus that kills or damages cells of the body's immune system.HIV most often spreads through unprotected sex with an infected person. AIDS may also spread by sharing drug needles or through contact with the blood of an infected person. Women can give it to their babies during pregnancy or childbirth.
The first signs of HIV infection may be swollen glands and flu-like symptoms. These may come and go a month or two after infection. Severe symptoms may not appear until months or years later.
A blood test can tell if you have HIV infection. Your health care provider can perform the test, or call the National AIDS hotline for a referral at (800) 342-AIDS (1-800-342-2437). There is no cure, but there are many medicines to fight both HIV infection and the infections and cancers that come with it. People can live with the disease for many years.
Myths, misconceptions, and misunderstandings about HIV and AIDS have spread more quickly than the virus itself. Our website, All About AIDS , sets the record straight. It explores the realities and presents facts about this complex disease.
Treatment
Myths, misconceptions, and misunderstandings about HIV and AIDS have spread more quickly than the virus itself. Our website, All About AIDS, sets the record straight. It explores the realities and presents facts about this complex disease.
Prevention
AIDS is a terrible disease, but there are ways to prevent the spreading of this illness. AIDS cannot be spread in the following ways:
Breathing the same air as people with AIDS
Eating food prepared by people with AIDS
Shaking hands with or hugging someone who has AIDS
Sharing Bathrooms with someone who has AIDS
Sitting next to someone who has AIDS
Insect bites, giving blood, swimming pools
You can however become infected with AIDS through:
sexual intercourse
contact with an infected persons blood
through blood transfusions
an infected, pregnant woman to her baby
shared drug needles
To prevent the chances of dispersing AIDS through transfusions, all blood that is received from donors is tested for HIV. To prevent spreading through sexual intercourse, it is suggested that latex condoms should be worn. Often times, drug needles are shared which is the most common way that AIDS is contracted. There is almost no way of preventing the spread of AIDS from a mother to a baby.
Despite evidence that prevention programs instituted some time ago are beginning to have an impact in some countries, the HIV/AIDS epidemic continues to grow. By 2005, the number of those infected had grown to more than 40 million, double the number in 1995. Previous success stories in Thailand and Uganda show potential to weaken as prevention programs have become less diligent. Globally, new infections among women, especially young women, continued to outpace those among men, - a stark reminder that gender inequity and violence against women fuel the epidemic. Life-saving drugs to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV have not been available to the hundreds of thousands of infants who have become needlessly infected at birth or through breastfeeding in the last year. According to UNAIDS and WHO, stigma and discrimination, whether actual or feared, remain perhaps the most difficult obstacles to prevention of HIV.
A unified and global commitment to turning the tide on this disease is nonetheless building. This effort requires more resources and more effective use of resources devoted to research, prevention, care and treatment for those infected with and affected by the disease. Simultaneous and sustained expansion of prevention and treatment efforts are needed if the pace of the epidemic is to be slowed.
Map 1. of current HIV/AIDS infections.
By the end of 2005, 40.3 million people were living with HIV/AIDS, including 17.5 million women and 2.3 million children under the age of 15.
4.9 million people became newly infected with HIV in 2005, including 700,000 children. Of these, 3.2 million new infections occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2005 alone, a total of 3.1 million people died of HIV/AIDS-related causes.
World-wide, only one in ten persons infected with HIV has been tested and knows his/her HIV status.
Global Disparity Global trends of infection emerging from the HIV/AIDS pandemic:
Ninety-six percent of people with HIV live in the developing world, most in sub-Saharan Africa. The epidemic continues to grow in this region, with nearly a million new infections between 2003 and 2005.
In some African countries, three quarters of those infected are women - many of whom have not had more than one sexual partner.
An estimated 5 to 6 million people in low- and middle-income countries will die in the next two years if they do not receive antiretroviral treatment (ART). At the end of 2005, only one in seven Asians and one in ten Africans who need ART were receiving it.
In six African countries, (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe), more than one in five of all pregnant women have HIV/AIDS. In Swaziland, nearly 40% of pregnant women are HIV-positive.
Without prevention efforts, 35% of children born to an HIV positive mother will become infected with HIV. At least a quarter of newborns infected with HIV die before age one, and up to 60% will die before reaching their second birthdays.
Injecting drug use and commercial sex work are fueling the epidemic across Asia and Eastern Europe, and few countries are sufficiently reaching out to these marginalized groups or addressing the poverty that often underlies these behaviors.
Discrimination against vulnerable groups is evident in the Russian Federation, where more than 90% of the estimated one million people living with HIV were infected through injecting drug use, but represent only 13% of those receiving antiretroviral therapy.
Women and AIDS By the end of 2005, women accounted for nearly half of all people living with AIDS worldwide, and represent almost 60% of infections in sub-Saharan Africa. The impact of HIV on women is also growing in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and South and South-East Asia. Moreover, young women are several times more likely than young men to contract the disease through heterosexual contact. Worldwide, 62% of infected young people are girls, and that number soars to 77% in sub-Saharan Africa. A woman's vulnerability to the virus is attributable not only to biological differences, but also to deeply entrenched socio-economic inequalities that further compound her risk. Because 70% of the world's poor are women, women have fewer economic options. They are far more vulnerable because of absolute poverty to engage in transactional sex to pay for food, school fees and other necessities. They are also vulnerable to coercive or forced sex and often unable to negotiate condom use. One in three women world-wide have been affected by gender-based violence, but poor women are even more likely to be abused. Many women, particularly married women, cannot control the circumstances under which sex takes place. Research in several countries shows that for far too many young girls, the first sexual experience is coerced or forced. Married women are especially unable to negotiate sex or condom use with their husbands who may have extramarital partners. Some research indicates that married women are in fact more at risk for HIV than unmarried women because they are more frequently exposed to intercourse within marriage.
HIV-positive women may transmit HIV to their children during pregnancy, in childbirth or through breastfeeding. Today, mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HIV is the primary mode of acquisition of HIV for the more than 2 million children living with HIV. While antiretroviral therapy significantly reduces the risk of MTCT of HIV, prevention coverage in the 30 African countries with the highest HIV prevalence is only 5 percent.
As AIDS ravages families and communities, the burden of caring for ill family members rests mainly with women and girls - many of whom may be seriously ill themselves. A woman affected by HIV/AIDS is plunged further into poverty, losing the ability to provide for herself and her children. Combined with pervasive social stigma and the collapse of traditional family and support structures, HIV/AIDS is eroding the status of women in many countries.
Reasons for Hope
The Caribbean is the region with the world's second highest HIV prevalence rate. There is some reason for optimism in this region, where overall HIV prevalence remained the same in 2005 as in 2003.
Left untreated, AIDS is eventually fatal; however, life-prolonging antiretroviral drugs have begun to transform HIV from an inescapable death sentence into a manageable condition for those fortunate enough to have access to them. In 2005, 250,000 to 350,000 deaths were averted because of recent scale-up of treatment.
A number of drugs such as Nevirapine are clinically proven to significantly reduce mother-to-child transmission when given to pregnant mothers and children shortly after birth.
The National AIDS Program of Brazil has successfully offered universal access to treatment while conducting an aggressive HIV prevention campaign. In May 2003, the program was presented with the $1 million Gates Award for Global Health at the Global Health Conference. Treatment coverage is also now over 80% in Argentina, Chile and Cuba.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, founded in 2001, illustrates a growing international commitment to address the pandemic, even though it remains well short of the $7-10 billion annual budget recommended by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
The U.S. government's commitment of $15 billion dollars over five years (2004-8) has great promise to make a substantial contribution if fully funded. For more information.
Top scientists from around the world are committed to vaccine development, which remains one of the greatest hopes the world has for preventing transmission of the virus. Clinical trials are now ongoing in several countries, including the United States.
More detailed information on which this update is based can be found in the UNAIDS/WHO epidemic update 2005.
Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report
Daily HIV/AIDS Report
Politics and Policy | Senate Passes Foreign Aid Bill That Increases Funds To Fight HIV/AIDS, Malaria, TB Worldwide
[Sep 07, 2007] The Senate on Thursday voted 81-12 to approve the fiscal year 2008 foreign aid spending bill (HR 2764) that would increase funds to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria worldwide, the AP/International Herald Tribune reports. The $34 billion measure would increase President Bush's $4.2 billion request for funds to fight HIV/AIDS globally by $940 million (Taylor, AP/International Herald Tribune, 9/6). The measure would increase the U.S. contribution to the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to $590 million (HR 2764 text, 9/7). The bill would allow President Bush and future presidents to waive the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief's abstinence spending requirement.
By law, at least one-third of HIV prevention funds that focus countries receive through PEPFAR must be used for abstinence-until-marriage programs (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 6/22).
The spending bill also would allocate $1.2 billion for the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a program meant to encourage economic and political reforms in developing countries. Bush requested $3 billion for MCC, according to the AP/Herald Tribune (AP/International Herald Tribune, 9/6). "A reduction of this magnitude is unacceptable and would severely undermine MCC's efforts to reduce poverty in countries that practice good governance, particularly in Africa, and make it more difficult for the United States to meet its commitment to double aid to Africa by 2010," the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement (Pulizzi, Dow Jones/Nasdaq, 9/6). Similar legislation passed the House in June, and the Senate bill must be reconciled with the House-approved measure (AP/International Herald Tribune, 9/6).
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