Science assignment help : Rates of HIV/AIDS are higher in The Third World
HIV/AIDS is an ever increasing problem which is found to be proliferating on Third World or the developing countries. Despite of all the efforts done by bodies like World Health Organization (WHO) and the Joint United States Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) who have been delivering a wide range of initiatives like education, treatment and prevention, it is spreading like wild fire (UNAIDS, 2000). AIDS got recognised firstly in the year 1981 and the virus which causes AIDS, HIV was isolated in the year 1983. The deadly HIV virus attacks the immune system and destroys or impairs their functioning and thus progressively it diminishes the ability of our body to fight certain cancers and infections (HIV/AIDS in Developing Countries, 2003).
The scale of this epidemic can b e imagined from the fact that in the last 20 years this global epidemic has claimed around 20 million lives. The Third World or the developing countries are the most affected ones and HIV/AIDS is treated largely as sexually transmitted disease which affects mostly the young people and has grave economic as well as social consequences. If check the regional breakdown of the number of people living with HIV/AIDS it is found that the top most ranker in the list is the sub-Saharan Africa the figure collected in year 2002 shows that there are over 28million people in this region who are living with HIV/AIDS and the number of people who are newly infected is found to be 350,000 in the sub-Sahara Africa. The next position is being occupied by the South and South East Asian countries where the number of people living with HIV/AIDS is found to be 6 million and 700,000 people have been newly infected with HIV/AIDS. It has been found that the main reason for HIV transmission in these regions is Hetero sexual sex (Kaposi’s Sarcoma and pneumocytosis pneumonia among homesexual men -New York California, 1981), while in the rest of the world there are other reasons also for spreading HIV/AIDS like injecting drug use, contact with body fluids or men having sex with men (Morison, 2001).
There are five nations which have been identified at very high risk: Nigeria, Ethiopia, China, India and Russia. The epidemic is most advanced in the Ethiopia and Nigeria where the projected cases of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria would be 10-15 million by year 2010 while in Ethiopia it would be 7-10 million. The HIV/AIDS epidemic has devastated the sub-Saharan Africa because of predominant heterosexuality which leads to sexually transmitted HIV virus and that is why more women are infected in this region than men. Moreover the unique pattern of sexual behaviour whereby the older men have sex with younger women , combines with higher susceptibility to infection amongst young women leads to very high infection rates of HIV/AIDS in sub-Sahara Africa (Glynn, Carael and al., 2000). Sometimes the inaccessibility of the antiretroviral treatment is also the cause of the death of many people on this region around the age of 8-10 due to infection. Tuberculosis is found to be the most common disease which is related to AIDS-related illness and causes death.
There exists some kind of relationship between poverty and AIDS, a communicable epidemic disease. It has also been seen that the epidemic diseases just like illness also result in the rise of poverty. A researcher noticed that there exists a high correlation between the HIV prevalence and lower or falling consumption of calories, falling protein consumption, unequal distribution of income and various other variable which are related conventionally to the susceptibility to infectious disease, which is howsoever transmitted ( Stillwagoin 2000:985-1011). There have been works in cell biology which have shown that the mechanism which develop a connection between the parasite infestation and malnutrition result in depressing both the non-specific an specific immune systems responses as they weaken the epithelial integrity. As well as the effectiveness of the cells present in the immune system. Although the most proximate cases of HIV infection are due to biological factors but the next reason is sexual behaviour which helps in determining the type and the frequency of sexual encounters the person will have.
Although Botswana has highest per capita income in Africa then too it has highest level of infections and this is mainly due to higher economic growth in Botswana. There are many other factors associated with rapid economic growth too like deprivation, death, disruption and disease (Szreter, 2001). The reason being fast and rapid growth leads to disruption of traditional norms like culture and it becomes tough for people to adapt to the changes (Youde, 2001). Another reason for the spared of HIV/AIDS in the Third World which has been found is the economic growth which is almost stagnant in case of African continent. The formal employment rate is found to be declining and the informal employment rate is increasing. That is why if economic growth results in changes which encourage HIV spread, in the same way economic decline too causes spread of HIV in the Third World Nations. It has been noticed that AIDS has very high capacity to push the economies towards declining track and then keep them there and this is what is seen to be happening with the Third World nations. The loss of efficiency and the decreased amount of savings which are accompanied with the spreading of AIDS is almost similar to “running Adam Smith in reverse” (Macpherson et al 2000).
In the South and South east Asian region there are huge variations on how the epidemic of AIDS spread because there has been r5easons like heterosexuality prevalent , then there are reasons like intravenous drug users too who are responsible for the HIV/AIDS. Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand have higher prevalence rate of HOV as compared to other HIV infected south East Asian nations. The East Asia and Pacific nations also shows less adult prevalence which is found to be very low ( <0.07%) but the patterns of sex work and the Intravenous Drug Users (IDU) show high potential for the rise in HIV spread and moreover the mobility between and within these countries is also very high moreover there are lot of sex workers just across the border of China too which shares border with sex workers packed nations like Thailand, Bangkok and Laos (The status and trends of the HIV/AIDS/STD epidemics in Asia and the Pacific. , 1999).
In the same manner there is higher prevalence of HIV seen in the Latin American countries like Belize (2%), Honduras (1.9%), Guyana (3%), Guatemala (1.4%), Panama (1.54%) and Surinam (1.3%). The heterosexual intercourse is the main reason which has lead to the rising spread of HIV in these countries of Latin American and Caribbean region, but other reasons like men having sex with men (MSM) and IDU are also the reason for spreading HIV/AIDS.
It has been noticed that the most affected countries which are majorly all the countries of sub-Sahara Africa are all very poor which leads to very high prevalence and the main reason found for HIV transmission in them is heterosexual intercourse an the epidemic in these nations is found to be very well established amongst the general population. The fundamental challenges which are being faced in order to reverse the epidemic or decrease the percentage of HIV/AIDS patients in the THUIRD World are weak health systems, lack of resources and numerous barriers which do not allow widespread behaviour change which is being posed by the gender inequality and poverty prevailing in these regions. On the other hand there are many countries like Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia which have lower prevalence of AIDS epidemics but amongst the key population and the reason being injecting drug users, men having sex with men and sex workers. In these countries the biggest reasons for constraining AIDS are lack of political will , denial as well as misguided and punitive policies which are followed towards the ones who are most affected by the epidemics.
It has been noticed that sexually transmitted infections in the male sex partner are vital facilitators of HIV transmission (Leynaert, Downs and de Vincenzi, 1998) and moreover the immature cervix of young women is very much susceptible to the entry of HIV. Although there are various other factors biological ones which facilitate HIV which are Hormonal contraceptives, abnormal vaginal flora and pregnancy too (Taha et al., 1998). That is why the South African women are highly exposed to HIV infection because of high pregnancy rates, young women having sexual relationship with young men who have recently contracted infection and improper and limited treatment opportunities for sexually transmitted disease( STD’s) (MacPhail et al., 2007). Moreover it has been studied that the CCR5 Gene is more common amongst the Caucasians however the role of the gene is not very clear but it is not found amongst the people of African descent.
Transactional sex is found to be another reason for HIV prevalence in both developed as well as developing countries (Chatterji et al., 2005). Transactional sex is also known to be associated with concurrent sexual partnerships and casual sex which is in turn again linked with higher likelihood of HIV transmission. It has been reported that HIV is less common amongst the higher socio-economic classes in Third World nations. Apartheid and racial discrimination and segregation are the factors which lead to uneducated women in Africa and specially the black ones (Lopman et al., 2007). Another reason is the distributed sex ratios due to migrant labour in South Africa which leads to concurrent partners and stimulated relationships with many partners and finally results in transactional sex. That is why the main driver for spreading HIV in South Africa is found to be the labour migration where the young men mostly from the rural areas leave their native place in search of employment and reach urban areas to work in the mines and the large farms (Nunn et al., 1995).
In many parts of South Africa people still believe that having sex with virgin will cure them from HIV and that is why the older men infected with HIV have high risk intergenerational sex with very young women (Jewkes, Martin and Penn-Kekana, 2002)? The education is also associated with higher HIV prevalence the blacks are less likely to get educated as compared to the whites or Asians. It has been found that education is associated with HIV whether its positive association or a negative one, it depends upon the circumstances and the settings. However a study done in India suggested that the individuals who had lower education levels in the country were found to be more affected by HIV.
Therefore the main reasons which have been found to cause the spared of HIV/AIDS in the Third World nations are: higher biological susceptibility amongst the young women to HIV infection, poverty and lower status of women in society, the role of CCR gene, role of migrant labour, Intergenerational sex, alcohol and other recreational drug usage, Lack of male circumcisions , “Dry Sex “ preference, lack of education regarding HIV infection, Role of AIDS “aerialists”, Racial as well as urban-rural differences, orphan hood due to HIV , openness regarding sexuality and HIV amongst the young people, incarceration and HIV, limited human resources for the intervention programs, and treatment of Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) (Muula, 2008).
The need of the hour is therefore to help the Millennium Development Goals established by the UN Millennium Project to proliferate which says Goal 6: “to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases”. Recognising the enormous pain and suffering being caused due to this epidemic the highest priority of the Millennium Project is to eradicate or minimise AIDS from society and especially Third World Nations. This can be done through reinvigoration of preventive measures of AIDS, focussing on the highly vulnerable populations, ensuring equitable access to the treatment of AIDS, with the expansion of AIDS services we need to invest in the health systems worldwide, integration of prevention and treatment, addressing the root causes like empowering the girls and women, planning for the orphans and the vulnerable children, expansion of the internationals and domestic financing by removing the barriers to its usage and finally empowering the governments and at the same time holding them responsible and accountable too for AIDS (Ruxin, 2005).
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