Aids

Description of HIV/AIDS

HIV stands for human immunodeficiency virus and if left untreated can eventually lead to AIDS or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. HIV attacks the body’s T-Cells which are cells that help the body to fight off infections. Without treatment, the number of T-Cells are drastically reduced, making the body more susceptible to infection or infection-related cancers. Eventually this disease destroys so many of these cells that the body cannot fight off other diseases and infections altogether. At this point the immune system is so weak and this period is known as the end stage of the HIV infection and is a signal that the person does have the AIDS virus.

It is thought that the HIV virus originated in the Democratic Republic of Congo back in the 1920’s when the disease crossed species from chimpanzees to humans. During the early 1980’s, the disease was somehow brought into the America’s and quickly spread from coast to coast, infecting and killing many homosexual men and eventually women. Sometime in the 1990’s, the United States implemented a travel ban in and out of the country, to those who were infected with HIV/AIDS. This ban was later lifted in 2010 by President George W. Bush. In 2013, an estimated 35 million people were reported to be living with HIV, many of these being treated with the antiretroviral treatment, and over 14 million people who had died from the disease. There are six major types of drugs used to treat HIV/AIDS. They are Entry Inhibitors, Fusion Inhibitors, Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors, Integrase Inhibitors, Protease Inhibitors, Multi-class Combination Products.

Ways to Prevent HIV/AIDS

The transmission and spread of HIV can only be done through specific activities like needle or syringe use and sexual behaviors. Fluids such as breast milk, blood, semen, rectal fluids, pre-seminal fluid, and vaginal fluids from an infected person with HIV can be transmitted. Contact with these fluids must done through...