AIDS in Africa :: Research Papers Term Papers

support in Africa I. IntroductionIn 1983, the low gear report indicating that wealthy Afri shadows were seeking medical treatment for assist in Europe, was published in a medical journal. What the ground did not discern at that time, was that service had been spreading rapidly through parts of primeval Africa for years. Furthermore, no one ever imagined that, by the end of the year 1997, an estimated 30.6 zillion persons in the humanity would be infected with human immunodeficiency virus, the virus causing AIDS, with the legal age of these people living in Africa (Feldman and Miller 14). The prospect of AIDS macrocosm responsible for over two million funerals in the year 1998 alone, was in addition something that no one had ever thought possible. However, the reality is that the HIV/AIDS federal agency in Africa has blown out of control, and the current epidemic as it exists there is far greater and more widespread than that of the rest of the world. sub-Saharan A frica, which is the region of Africa hit hardest by the epidemic, is home to only one-tenth of the worlds population, yet reportedly accounts for 71 percent of the infected population, 79 percent of cumulative AIDS related deaths and 92 percent of the worlds AIDS orphans. At the end of 1999, 24.5 million adults and children were living with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Also taking a toll, is the lifetime expectancy rate of Africans, which has dropped from sixty-one to thirty-nine years in the historical decade, and is estimated to shrink to thirty-one years by 2008 due to the AIDS epidemic. Although AIDS is just one of the problems presently facing Africa, it is a major botheration that needs to be addressed, before entire cultures are wiped out. AIDS has already claimed more lives than the total of all wars, famines, floods and such deadly diseases as malaria on the African continent (Laino). Attempts to eliminate or at least let off AIDS in Africa, though, have not bee n easy or quite successful. For a variety of reasons, due mainly to the cultural and economic aspects of Africa, AIDS itself, and thus the treatment and prevention of it, on this continent is different from the situation in the US, or most other developing countries for that matter. Evidence of this can best be seen through the inability of the rest of the world to help deal with the problem of AIDS in Africa (as it is clear that a ground as poor as Africa can not survive this mesh on their own) which has allowed the problem to spiral out of control.