aids awareness :: Free AIDS Essays

When AIDS first emerged, no-one could deport predicted how the epidemic would spread across the world and how many millions of lives it would change. There was no real idea what caused it, and consequently, no real idea how to protect against it. Now, in 2004, we know from bitter nonplus that AIDS is caused by the virus HIV, and that it can devastate families, communities and whole continents. We have seen the epidemic knock decades off countries national development, widen the gulf betwixt rich and poor nations and push already-stigmatized groups closer to the margins of society. We are living in an international society, and HIV has become the first truly international epidemic, considerably crossing oceans and international borders.Just as cl early on, experience shows that the right approaches, use quickly enough with courage and resolve, can and do result in lower national HIV infection rates and less execrable for those affected by the epidemic.Globally, we have learned that if a country acts early enough, a national HIV crisis can be averted.It has also been storied that a country with a very high HIV prevalence rate will often see this rate compensatetually stabilise, and even decline. This indicates, among other things, that people are beginning to change risky behaviour patterns, because they have seen and known people who have been killed by AIDS. Fear is the worst, and put out way of changing peoples behaviour and by the cartridge clip that this happens it is usually too late to save a huge good turn of that countrys population.Already, more than twenty million people well-nigh the world have died of AIDS-related diseases. In 2004, 3.1 million men, women and children have died. Around doubly the amount who have died until now - almost 40 million - are now living with HIV, and most of these are likely to die all over the next decade or so. The most recent UNAIDS/WHO estimates show that, in 2004 alone, 4.9 million people were newly i nfect with HIV.It is disappointing that the global song of people infected with HIV continue to rise, despite the fact that strong prevention strategies already exist.AfricaIt is in Africa, in some of the poorest countries in the world, that the relate of the virus has been most severe. Altogether, there are now 16 countries in Africa in which more than one-tenth of the adult population aged 15-49 is infected with HIV.