HIV and AIDS in Africa - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages The area has about 22.9 million victims of HIV and AIDS. This is approximately two thirds of the world’s AIDS victims. In 2010 only, about 1.2 million persons died in the region out of AIDS and 1.9 million persons became infected with HIV the same year. Since the detection of the HIV in the world and its declaration as a pandemic, more than 14.8 million children have lost either one or both of the parents because of AIDS in the sub-Saharan region. Origin of AIDS HIV and AIDS have a great history in Africa. It links its cause to the West Africa. The dominant feature is silent on the dire cause. However, hypothesis links the origin of the disease in Africa with the consumption of the bush meat or literally sexual contact with a monkey. This last hypothesis meets a lot of skepticism from the Africans who term the allegation as an uncommon practice in their tradition. The most current hypothesis include a colonial medical practice in the mid of 20th century (Cohen 412). The hypothesis claims that a virus jumped from a chimpanzee or an ape to human. The virus spread and became established among the human population in around 1930. This is the most probable time when the disease began because traces of the disease are rooted back in the colonial period in the rubber plantations, but there is no substantial ground to hold this (Morrison 89). Another unique type of HIV virus was isolated from some AIDS victims of West Africa and named as HIV-2. The new virus had same modes of transmission as the original version. However, the sufferer of the new mode of disease develops the symptoms more slowly and mildly, as compared to those of HIV-1 (the original mode of HIV virus). Therefore, HIV-2 was comparatively less infectious and serious on the body of the sufferer (Essex 517). The duration of the disease is, however, long for the victims of the HIV-2. The incidences of HIV-2 are predominant in countries like the republic of Botswana, Congo, and Burkina Faso. The fist case of the HIV -2 was in the Western countries in 1987, specifically in the United States. Since then statistics conducted around the world have established that the prevalence of the HIV-2 is to be higher than the HIV-1 in a few decades. Jonny Steinberg Jonny Steinberg is a journalist and an author. Steinberg in his writings has covered a lot on the issues of HIV and AIDS in his homeland, which is South Africa. He wrote the novel titled A Young Man’s Journey through AIDS Pandemic. In this book, Steinberg explored the exact cause of the HIV and AIDS. He made numerous experiments and tests. He then, out of many trials on the form of the disease existence, came up with prevention measures. Steinberg was interested in the willful ignorance of the people in South Africa (Douglas 18). He was against the common belief in South Africa that people should only eat better, drink and have sex for that good life. Steinberg established that in South Africa, in every eight persons one is a sufferer of the disease. The recent survey in South Africa found that the number of burials conducted within a specific time was twice that of a wedding (Morrison 76). These findings made the organized groups of South Africa push the government hardly to distribute antiretroviral drugs to the citizens. In the Sizwe’s test, Steinberg asked why it was that the country recorded so many deaths out of AIDS. He also wondered why so many South ...Download file to see next pagesRead More