Why is Aids such a worldwide threat?

aids' virus

Aids, an acronym for acquired immune deficiency syndrome, was first recognized in 1981. Medical scientists at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, investigated the reports of a rare lung infection, first seen among homosexual men in Los Angeles and later among others in New York. Their illness resulted from an organism that had already caused pneumonia in people whose natural immune system, which guards us against disease, had failed to function.

In the following years a range of what are called opportunistic infections was reported. These infections are of a kind that do not normally trouble people with efficient immune systems. The victims were not all homosexual; they included people injecting drugs into their veins, and haemophiliacs who had received blood transfusions. Scientists deduced that the disease was transmitted not only by sexual activity but also by exchanging blood. Within a few months of each other in 1983 and 1984, French and American researchers identified a virus that was later named HIV, for human immunodeficiency virus.

We know that a twenty-five-year-old former sailor who died mysteriously in Manchester, England, in 1959 was the first recorded Aids victim. Puzzled doctors preserved tissue from his kidney, bone marrow and spleen.  In 1990, analysis showed that he had died of Aids. Already, the disease has claimed half a million victims in total of 168 countries.

The HIV virus attacks a white blood that is essential in controlling our defence mechanism against disease. Not everybody who is infected by HIV gets Aids. In some, the virus lies dormant; others suffer slight fevers, weight loss, a vague feeling or being ‘off color’. The unfortunate victims in whom the virus causes Aids may get any of variety of infections and cancers. Anybody losing weight unexplainably or whose lymph glands swell may have HIV. A test for HIV involves checking the blood for antibodies to the virus. A positive result is always rechecked. A negative test does not necessarily rule out HIV: it may mean that it is too early to tell. If the suspected victim is in a high-risk group, another test will be held within about six months.

One reason why Aids is such a worldwide health danger is that medical scientists have not yet found a cure or produced a vaccine. Another is that HIV spreads in so many ways. For personal safety and to encourage compassion for the thousands of victims, we should all try to understand of victims, we should all try to understand the disease.

HIV is transmitted in eight basic ways. Some 80 percent of recorded cases arose from homosexual or bisexual activity. An other 8 percent of victims received infected blood in transfusions. An additional 2 percent were drug users who shared needles. Recently, Aids has increased significantly among heterosexual some infected women passing the disease to their babies. In rare cases, people have contracted HIV or Aids by accident – for example, through treading on an infected needle.

Just as it is important to know  how HIV is transmitted, it is necessary to know how it is not. Shaking with a sufferer will not give you Aids. Nor will kissing without exchanging saliva. Aids cannot be caught from toilet seats, or by sharing eating and drinking utensils. In most countries today, doctor taking blood or giving transfusions are well aware of the need for sterile implements.

Until scientists find a cure or a vaccine, prevention is the best safeguard against Aids. In that, safe-sex techniques had the list.