A pandemic such as HIV/AIDS causes more devastation than just the endless deaths that it causes. If it is not dealt with it can prevent a country from moving forward financially to becoming an industrial and flourishing nation. The pandemic in Africa concerning HIV/AIDS has been an ongoing issue for years. It has become a matter that has claimed the lives of many African citizens. Even though government lacks resources to help its country their lack of involvement is adding to the ongoing problem of HIV/AIDS. This paper will discuss the issues surrounding the HIV/AIDS pandemic on the continent of Africa.
It is common knowledge that the HIV/AIDS has infected millions of people in Africa. An incurable disease such as HIV/AIDS can threaten the possibility of becoming a developed country. Economic growth cannot exist without the presence of laborers, sick and dying people can not add to the workforce. A disease such as HIV/AIDS in a developing country creates a disastrous cycle of problems. The fact that this disease can infect a fetus adds to the scarcity of human capital, and because education and health care is poor, stopping the rapid spread of a disease such as this is extremely difficult. Moreover the loss of infected skilled laborers can jeopardize any industry that already exists, and prevent new industries from being created. As previously discussed education comes with a cost and educating new skilled workers, after loosing so many to this disease results in higher costs, less competition, and lower profits.
Human Immunodeficiency Virus also known as HIV is either of two closely related retroviruses that invade T-helper lymphocytes are responsible for AIDS . There are two types of HIV, HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is responsible for the vast majority of AIDS. HIV-2, seen more often in western Africa, has a slower course than HIV-1. There are many strains of both types and the virus mutates rapidly, a trait that has made it especially difficult for researchers to find an effective treatment or vaccine. In many cases, a person's immune system will fight off the invasion of HIV for many years, producing billions of CD4 cells daily, always trying to keep up with the HIV's mutations, before it succumbs and permits the well-known signs of AIDS to develop.
Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), a disease caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). In 1981, medical reports first described unusual infections and cancer previously seen only in severely immunosuppressed patients, such as those undergoing organ transplants. By 1982, epidemiological evidence indicated that the disease was probably caused by a virus transmissible via sexual intercourse, transfusion of contaminated blood or blood products, and different types of blood it causes drug injections. Later, it was also determined that AIDS could be passed from mother to baby during delivery or in breast milk if a mother have aids and breast feed their child the child will mostly be contaminated with the disease.
Though the entire continent of Africa is feeling the effects of this deadly disease that are some areas that feel an even greater impact, while others face very little. Among all the countries in Africa it would seem that the southern countries are experiencing the highest level of citizens infected with aids. At least three of the countries in Africa have above twenty percent of their population infected with the deadly virus. According to AVERT and international AIDS charity "Sub-Saharan Africa is more heavily affected by HIV and AIDS than any other region of the world. An estimated 22.4 million people are living with HIV in the region - around two thirds of the global total Sub-Saharan Africa is more heavily affected by HIV and AIDS than any other region of the world." (avert.org 2010)
Africa is tarnished with its reputation for the harsh and treatment of women. The country is notrious for violence towards women especially sexual violence. Surveys have suggested, "Over a quarter of men reported ever having raped a woman… The generally high HIV prevalence among all men surveyed means there is a good chance that a man who commits rape has HIV." (avert.org 2010) Each year hundreds of women and young girls are sexually violated. These acts of violence are undoubtedly contributing to the senseless deaths brought on by the spread of HIV/AIDS.
An even harsher reality of sexual violence towards are the babies that are born infected as a result of these crimes. In 1978 the estimates in Africa and India, there was only 80% of women assisted during birth by a traditional birth attendant, and world-wide they deliver an estimated 60-80% of all babies. In (1990) WHO suggests further that, after training, traditional birth attendants could also act as community health educators, giving advice on nutrition, family planning, immunizations shots, AIDS prevention, the importance of personal and environmental hygiene, is the most important need to bring babies and children to local health clinics. But in most societies, there are many traditional healers which often linked, formally and informally, with other such healers. NGUBANE describes how, among Zulu traditional healers in South Africa, these links tend to be by informal networks. Each Zulu diviner of isangoma may make informal contact, over a 3-5-year period, with over 400 fellow diviners all over the country. This provides them with an opportunity to exchange information and techniques, and to monitor each other's behavior. (http://www.credoreference.com/entry/routhistscience/traditional_medicine)
The Government departments at national provincial level are organized around five different clusters (economic; social; governance; justice; crime prevention and safety; along with the international relations), this is to ensure greater collaboration around cross cutting policy and implementation issues. The Social Sector Cluster is the main cluster that deals with health and social matters.
HIV and AIDS is one of the programs on Government's programmer of Action for which the Social Sector Cluster is responsible. The social sector cluster is well placed to provide leadership and support to other clusters and public sector departments. This is to ensure the maximum discussion for the government-wide program on HIV and AIDS at both national and provincial level.
The Social Cluster is well placed to perform this function at both national and provincial government levels. There are 9.6 HIV and AIDS units in the government department. Each government department has a focal person to manage the implementation of relevant HIV and AIDS programmers. HIV and AIDS issues are brought to the attention of the above national bodies by the HIV & AIDS Units. It is the responsibility of these units to prepare brief documents for the national forums, and attend meetings to provide further information to aid decision-making in national committees and bodies. They are also responsible for development of relevant strategies, policies and programmers; ensuring availability of finance and other resources; and for providing support to implementing agencies in their departments. This cluster HIV and AIDS in the DOH also provides secretariat support to SANAC. And the Government departments, as well as sectors of civil society, report regularly to SANAC.
The specific objectives of SANAC are to advise government on HIV, AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs). These are policy and strategy that are related matters create and strengthen partnerships for an expanded national response to HIV and AIDS in South Africa receive and disseminate all sectorial interventions to HIV and AIDS.
The history of HIV and AIDS in South Africa is the most controversial of any country. It is littered with examples of government inaction and harmful interference, pseudoscience, also with many conflicts between politicians, AIDS organizations and scientists. The after-effects of some two decades of counterproductive policies are still being felt today in a country that has the world's largest HIV epidemic.
The concentration of HIV within the gay community which led to belief that AIDS was a homosexual disease, with the wider population largely ignoring the risks, and the apartheid government excusing itself from acting. Cases of hemophiliacs becoming infected through infected blood and blood products led to a moralization of the epidemic, with this group being portrayed as innocent victims, in contrast, of course.
Before the 1960s there were early stages of AID. Some experts studied the wide spread of the epidemic which they suggested that about 2,000 people in Africa may have been infected with HIV by the 1960s. They stored blood samples from an American malaria research project carried out in the Congo in 1959 prove one such example of early HIV infection.
By the 1970s the first AIDS epidemic in Kinshasa is believed to have occurred. The emerging epidemic in the Congolese capital was signaled by a surge in opportunistic It is speculated that HIV was brought to the city by an infected individual who travelled from Cameroon by river down into the Congo. On arrival in Kinshasa, the virus entered a wide urban sexual network and spread quickly. By the 1980s the spread and reaction of HIV was probably carried into Eastern Africa (Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and Kenya) in the 1970s from its western equatorial origin, it did not reach epidemic levels in the region until the early 1980s.
The accelerated spread in the region was due to a combination of widespread labor migration, high ratio of men in the urban populations, low status of women, lack of circumcision, and prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases. Although it is thought that sex workers played a large part in the accelerated transmission rate in East Africa; in Nairobi because 85 per cent of sex workers were infected with HIV by 1986.
By 1980 Uganda was hit very hard by the AIDS epidemic. Doctors were confronted by different surge in many different cases at the beginning of the decade. The severe wasting disease known locally as 'slim disease', alongside a large number of fatal opportunistic infections such as Kaposi's sarcoma. By this time doctors were aware of AIDS cases with similar symptoms in the United States:
In the 1990s Southern Africa and the Fight for Treatment was a bleak time in the history of AIDS in Africa. At the time a new HIV infection rates were rocketing in Southern Africa there were few ideas of how to deal with generalized epidemics in poor countries. Prevention campaigns were having minimal effect and there was no visible prospect for effective treatment in Africa. The international community was yet to take efficient action and many national government programmers were corrupt or ill-equipped to deal with the escalating crisis45. By the middle of the decade the seriousness of the epidemic was blatant. (http://www.avert.org/aidssouthafrica.htm)
