Aids

Introduction

It is an indisputable fact that HIV/AIDS is a global pandemic. Since it was recognized in 1981 HIV has killed more than 25 million people and an estimated 38.6 million people live with the disease today; thus making it arguably the most destructive pandemic in recorded history.1 HIV is most prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa, with 64% of all people living with HIV in this region.2 In the United States, a million people may be infected with the disease, infections growing most rapidly among black Americans.

Currently there is no cure for HIV, although there are multiple antiretroviral medications. However, these medicines are expensive and not widely available in places where AIDS causes the most devastation. Organizations like World Health Organization (WHO) and Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) have taken action in preventing the spread of the disease although unfortunately the number of people living with HIV continues to rise.

What is HIV/AIDS?

AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) is the advanced condition of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus). Thus HIV is the causative agent of AIDS. A person infected with HIV is considered to have AIDS when their CD4+ T-cell count drops below 200 per cubic millimeter of blood. (The healthy amount of T-cells is 1,000+ per cubic millimeter.) Once the T-cell count drops their immune system will be unable to fight off bacteria and viruses that normally would not be severe. These opportunistic infections will eventually be fatal. It normally takes several years for HIV to develop into full blown AIDS.

AIDS is believed to have originated in West-Central Africa from a similar virus among sooty mangabeys, a type of monkey. This virus is known as Simian Immunodeficiency Virus or SIV. From these primates the infection could have jumped to a human host, undergone mutation into the current form of HIV and became transmissible from human to human. From that point it has spread to become a modern day...