How did the AIDS Epidemic Begin? Check This!

AIDS is the most severe type of disease induced by HIV (human immunodeficiency virus). It is a virus that destroys the immune system of the body. It may leave a person open to many life-threatening infections from the outside. Read more definition of HIV and AIDS.

Do You Know How Did the AIDS Epidemic Begin? 

So, how did the AIDS epidemic begin? In the early 1980s, doctors in California and New York began observing a very unusual illness in a small number of young men. The men, who often do "homosexsuil" activities, were suffering unusual infections and cancers. Some of them were dying. The doctors notice that the infections were similar to those visible in children who are born with impaired immune systems. But, these men had been healthy and should have had good immune systems.

The scientists from the government searched for other incidents of the disease and found more of them. The illness also appeared to infect people who had obtained blood transfusion. It also strikes drug addicts who had shared needles with each other. Many reports of the disease began to arrive from states, including African and Caribbean countries, where it looked to spread mainly by sexuil contact intercourse between men and women. Some infants were born with it, too. 

AIDS 

This strange disease had become one of the worst epidemics ever to attack humanity less than twenty years later. By the end of 1998, AIDS or acquired immune deficiency syndrome had slain about 14 million people worldwide. It is including more than three million children. More detail, AIDS had killed more than 400,000 individuals in the United States, including almost 5,000 children younger than age 15. 

HIV 

The people have not yet developed even greater numbers of individuals are infected by this virus. Nearly one million people are estimated being infected with HIV, but most of them do not know that they are carrying a disease-causing agent. Half of them will have developed AIDS within ten years of being infected. Worldwide, More than 33 million individuals are living with infection of HIV in the global world. It mostly in developing countries such as Africa and Asia. 

People who at risk

HIV infection is a definite risk among teenagers and young adults just like other STD (sexuilly transmitted diseases). More than 110,000 individuals in their twenties have been diagnosed with AIDS disease. Read more: diagnosis of HIV and AIDS. It is estimated that most of them became contaminated with HIV when they were teenagers. It is thought that up to one-quarter of all HIV infections in the US—and half of all HIV infections the global happen in teenagers and individual in their early twenties. 

Many billions of dollars have been used to study HIV/ AIDS, to understand it, to prevent it, and to cure it. There has been a little progress although there is still no cure and no proven vaccine that can be produced. However, the number of deaths from AIDS fell sharply in the US starting in 1996 because of new drugs. Many patients with HIV infection are living longer and enjoying better lives. They are going to school, raising families, working, and enjoying their life. We hope that this disease will become like other chronic illness, like asthma, diabetes, etc. It is a serious illness but it can be controlled with a good medical treatment.

Read more about HIV and AIDS on this blog.

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