HIV

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    HIV is a virus which still occurs all over the world today. More than 70 million people have been diagnosed with HIV, according to the World Health Organization and about 35 million have died from AIDS since the start of the pandemic. Human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, is a virus that targets the immune system , specifically CD4 cells (or T cells). Body fluids such as blood , semen , vaginal fluids, anal fluids, and breast milk transmit the virus. Historically, HIV has been transmitted most commonly by casual sex, exchanging needles for drug use and conception. Over time, HIV can destroy so many CD4 cells that the body is unable to combat infections and diseases, leading to the most severe form of HIV infection: acquired immunodeficiency syndrome or AIDS. An individual with AIDS is very vulnerable to cancer and life-threatening infections, like pneumonia. While there is no cure for HIV or AIDS, a person living with HIV who receives early care will live almost as long as anyone without the virus. Researchers trace the roots of HIV back to chimpanzees and simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), an HIV-like virus that targets monkeys and apes' immune systems. Researchers identified a chimpanzee strain called SIVcpz in 1999 which was almost identical to HIV. Chimps, the scientist later discovered, hunting and eating two smaller species of monkeys — red-capped mangabeys and larger spot-necked monkeys — who carry and infect the chimps with two SIV strains. Such two strains probably merged to form SIVcpz, which can spread between chimpanzees and humans.SIVcpz possibly transferred to humans when hunters in Africa ate infected chimps, or the contaminated blood of the chimps got into hunters' cuts or wounds. Scientists suggest that the first human transmission of SIV to HIV that contributed to the global pandemic took place in Kinshasa, the capital and largest city in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in 1920. The spread of the virus may have spread from Kinshasa through transportation routes (roads , railways and rivers) through refugees and sex trade. Throughout the 1960s, after Haitian workers returned home in the former Democratic Republic of Congo, HIV spread from Africa into Haiti and the Caribbean. The virus then spread to New York City from the Caribbean around 1970 and later into San Francisco in the decade. International travel from the US helped spread the epidemic across the rest of the globe. Evidence about AIDS remains disturbing. The condition was ignored for a long time before the first reports of immunosuppressed patients with illnesses were reported as opportunistic in 1981. Nearly 40 years later, we are all in the starting box now with 35 million deaths in obituaries. The modes of transmission, signs and symptoms, medical testing and treatment, though we know more about this virus today; many people around the world are unaware of being infected, around 40%. The risk of ignorance for the majority of the population is immense, in fact 60 percent of new cases of HIV in Spain were caused by patients who have not yet been diagnosed.The HIV problem continues to this day. Reason? People who are infected are not tested to recognize it. This means that when the disease appears it is too late or another person has already been infected. In short, ignorance has been what has made this problem persist to this day. Although there is no vaccine, there are many treatments that offer a better quality of life for an HIV patient. However fear causes many to not be tested. Thanks to that, people are still dying and not much progress has been made.

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