HIV/AIDS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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HIV/AIDS in the United States of America

HIV and aids are some of the diseases which have brought a lot of attention and issues within the united states of the United States. It has been in existence in the United States since 1960. In the same manner, it has affected the other parts of the world the United States is not an exception. However, the effects have been minimized by taking or ant-retro viral. The rates of infection are still not as low as expected even after a lot of public education and literacy about the disease. Most of the infections are among the young and the trend keeps on rising. AIDS which stands for the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is the full-blown form of HIV which is the causative virus of the disease is AIDS. This disease has widespread effects and it can even become worse if it is not diagnosed at the right time and the necessary precautions are taken so that other people are not infected. This paper, therefore, discusses HIV and AIDS in the United States, the extent of its effects, and the history of the virus in the United States (Hall et al, 2008).

The disease was first diagnosed among homosexuals in Los Angeles New York and San Francisco in 1981. In the first days, citizens from other countries were turned away from the United States once they got to the border of the country. In the first days of the disease, there were many deaths however there has been a sharp decline in the number of deaths due to the disease of late since there have been many ways to curb the disease from the anti-retroviral to the point of using public education to make sure that people know a lot about the disease and therefore develop ways to curb the spread and the effects of the disease. In 2016 more than one million individuals over 13 years of age had HIV and 14% of them were not aware that they had the disease. The most affected groups by HIV/AIDS are gay and bisexual men, African Americans, and Latinos (Lyles et al, 2006).

By the year 2018, about 700,000 individuals in America have died because of the disease. Every year more than 12,000 individuals die from the disease in the United States of America (Fauci et al, 2019). Different methods were adopted to control and prevent further infections of the disease. Some of the ways which were adapted included travel restrictions, medical treatments, and public health policies that were developed in face of the disease. The perception of the disease was a wrong one from the first days and therefore later there were campaigns to counteract this. On the side of the doctors, the disease was not their ethical duty to treat. Therefore most of the doctors in the 80s were not willing to help the patients who had the disease (Hall et al, 2008). This, therefore, made the situation of the patients during that time very difficult and the patients were most of the time dying unattended to because doctors believed that they could get the disease upon coming close to the people who were already affected by the disease.

When it comes to race there is a very different view whereby the African Americans are viewed as having contributed highly to the disease. In 2017 43% of African Americans were diagnosed with the disease. African Americans account for about 13% of the total United States population. Even though the rate of infection of the disease has reduced in almost all the groups among the African American gay individuals it has raised by 4%. In contrast, Latinos accounted for about 21% of new infections in the united states (HIV.gov, 2019). Asian Americans represent only 1% of positive cases within the American population but the gay and bisexual men of Asian origin had a rise in infection cases of HIV/AIDS of 54% between 2011 to 2015 (Denning, & DiNenno, 2010).

In 2018 there were 37,968 new cases of infections diagnosed in the United States and out of these 51% were from the south. 86% of the infected people knew that they had the disease during the time of testing. The rates of infection in the south were 15.2%, 9.4% in the northeast, 9.2% in the west, and 7.2% in the mid-west (HIV.gov, 2019).

Among the different campaigns which have been adopted for the prevention of dilemma or issues to do with the increased spread of the disease in the United States, the Catholic Church was the first organization to address this issue. In 1987 they produced the document referred to as the many faces of AIDS: a gospel response. In this letter, they insisted that every individual had to be treated with decency. This meant that the doctors and the other people who were getting away from the individuals who were affected should not have done so, rather they could be close to the individuals while preventing themselves from being infected but at the same time providing the case that is needed most by these people (Curran et al, 1998).

There is also current day activism which ensures that individuals are well taught about the virus, how to prevent themselves from the disease, and what to do to enable protection of themselves as they take care of the other individuals who are infected by eth disease and are close to them (Lyles et al, 2006).

In conclusion, the disease has not had a very big effect on the American population but it remains a very big threat that has to be dealt with, and all the individuals are provided with the much-needed care and information for them to be able to protect themselves and those around them.

References

Curran, J. W., Jaffe, H. W., Hardy, A. M., Morgan, W. M., Selik, R. M., & Dondero, T. J. (1988). Epidemiology of HIV infection and AIDS in the United States. Science, 239(4840), 610-616.

Denning, P., & DiNenno, E. (2010, July). Communities in crisis: is there a generalized HIV epidemic in impoverished urban areas of the United States. In XVIII international AIDS conference (Vol. 1).

Fauci, A. S., Redfield, R. R., Sigounas, G., Weahkee, M. D., & Giroir, B. P. (2019). Ending the HIV epidemic: a plan for the United States. Jama, 321(9), 844-845.

Hall, H. I., Song, R., Rhodes, P., Prejean, J., An, Q., Lee, L. M., … & HIV Incidence Surveillance Group. (2008). Estimation of HIV incidence in the United States. Jama, 300(5), 520-529.

HIV.gov. (2019, March 13). U.S. statistics. HIV.gov. https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/data-and-trends/statisticsLyles, C. M., Crepaz, N., Herbst, J. H., & Kay, L. S. (2006). Evidence-based HIV behavioral prevention from the perspective of the CDC’s HIV/AIDS Prevention Research Synthesis Team. AIDS Education & Prevention, 18(supp), 21-31.