World Issues: HIV/AIDS HIV / AIDS by Andy 1. What are the main issues for this topic? Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is the virus that causes the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Once infected with HIV, AIDS diagnosis is imminent, but a person can be infected with HIV for over 10 years without an AIDS diagnosis. AIDS attacks a person's immune system, leaving them defenseless against infections and cancers. 2. What are some regional examples of these issues? AIDS is found throughout the world with an estimated 34 million people infected with HIV while approximately 19 million people have died of an AIDS related disease. HIV/AIDS has a greater impact on less developed countries as they do not have the resources to educate, protect or treat their citizens as well as developed countries. 3. How does this issue affect me (at the personal level)? HIV/AIDS has the potential to affect us all. Anyone can become infected with this fatal virus. If you yourself do not contract the virus, it is possible that someone you care about could. 4. How does this issue affect youth in my community? In Canada there have been an estimated 50,000 cases of HIV/AIDS since the first case in Canada, in 1982. While sexually transmitted disease rates are not as high as they have been in the past, they are still highest among youth. In an effort to prevent sexually transmitted disease as well as unwanted pregnancy the Canadian governement is making sexuality education a part of the school curriculum in many provinces. This includes information about the modes of infection and prevention of such diseases as well as encouraging youth to practice safe sex. This sexuality education program is being supplemented with resources that address the issue of homophobia. Gay, lesbian and bisexual youth are especially at risk groups for contracting HIV/AIDS. These youth tend to leave the home or school environment earlier than others and have a heightened risk of suicide, street involvement and drug use. Gay men and youth are especially at risk for AIDS as they account for 38% of new positive tests. The youth in all of the above groups do not have the same social support in their communities as other, which is one explanation as to why they are more prone to risk taking behavior. To help remedy this problem the Canadian government has developed programs involving many community agencies that support these youth. 5. How does this issue affect youth in the Americas? One out of every two-hundred people living in North America or Latin America is infected with HIV. In the Carribean this statistic is nearly four times higher. 8% of the world's population lives in either Latin America or the Carribean, while these two regions account for 4.9% of people in the world living with HIV. In Canada and the United States, access to antiretroviral therapy has decreased AIDS mortality. This treatment is not as accessible in less developed countries though, as it is rather costly. As these undeveloped countries do not have access to the same resources available to most North Americans they cannot provide the same levels of HIV/AIDS education. Many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, the report noted, have "no information at all about infection levels or risk behaviors in sub-populations especially vulnerable to HIV infection. This is unlikely to be because such risk behavior does not exist. It is, rather, because it has been overlooked, deliberately or otherwise. Homosexual behavior is illegal in many countries of the Region and injecting drug use is illegal in all of them. Besides being illegal, these behaviors are widely frowned on and frequently denied, sometimes even by the people who engage in them. Because members of sub-populations with high risk behavior are also part of the wider population, the behaviors that expose them to HIV infection may also eventually expose the men and women with whom they interact, even when those men and women do not share the risk behavior. Societies should therefore be driven by self interest -- as well as by moral obligation -- to provide information and services that meet the needs of sub-populations at high risk of contracting or passing on HIV." ~ www.paho.org Sources used in the creation of this article: 1: Pan-American Health Organization www.paho.org 2. Health Canada www.healthcanada.ca 3. Youth - The Canadian Strategy on HIV/AIDS www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hppb/hiv_aids/can_strat/toolkit_99/youth.html