AIDS in Africa :: HIV Disease Epidemic

Africas help Epidemic Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) has become an epidemic for galore(postnominal) developing regions. Although it does exist in the developed nations, it is more prevalent in places like S emergeh America, Asia, the island countries and most heavily of all Africa. There argon many aspects to the problem of AIDS in Africa. Public health depart workforcets lack the resources to discreetness patients properly and to control the epidemic through education. Thirty-three one thousand million mess have AIDS in the world. Africa has two-thirds of that number. According to the United Nations Aids platform on human immunodeficiency virus/Aids, and World Health Organization (WHO), estimates, seven bug out of cristal citizenry saucilyly infected with human immunodeficiency virus in 1998 operate in sub Saharan Africa. Among children under 15, the proportion is nine out of ten. Of all Aids deaths since the epidemic started, eighty-three percent have been in the region. These numbers sound even more astonishing considering only tenth part of the worlds population lives in Africa, south of the Sahara. The amount of Africans bear on by the epidemic is frightening. Since the start of the epidemic, an estimated 34 million people spiritedness in sub-Saharan Africa have been infected with HIV. Approximately 11.5 million of those people have already died, one-fourth of them being children. During the course of 1998, Aids has been liable for an estimated two million deaths in Africa. There is about 21.5 million men and women living with HIV in Africa, plus an extra one million being children. Four million of those people contracted the infection in 1998 alone (Mail & guardian). No country in Africa has escaped the virus. Most of the new infections are concentrated in East Africa and especially in the grey part of the continent. In fact, the southern region of Africa holds majority of the worlds most hard-hit countries with the most AIDS cases. According to the Department of Health, South Africas current estimates show that over one person out of every(prenominal) five between the age of 15 and 49 is living with HIV or Aids in Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe was especially hit hard. There are twenty-five surveillance sites in the country where blood taken from great(predicate) women is tested anonymously as a way of tracking the HIV infection. The most recent data, from 1997, show that HIV prevalence was below ten percent in just two sites.