Campaigns against HIV and AIDS - Essay Example

"Campaigns against HIV and AIDS" is a gorgeous example of a paper on the virus.
HIV/AIDS is a medical condition that has continued to claim numerous lives across all generations i.e. children, youth, and the old. Scientists have invested a lot of effort and resources for a long time, trying to find a cure for the disease but to no avail. However, it has been established through medical and social consensus that the best possible way of controlling the dilemma, is to protect oneself as well as others from contracting the disease which occurs through various identified risks such as having unprotected sex with an infected person, sharing of needles by drug abusers, open wounds coming into contact with infected blood, mother to child infection among others (Cohen, 2010). This paper will discuss various protective measures available as well as new scientific protective inventions.

HIV/AIDS Protection

            HIV/AIDS as earlier mentioned is a major dilemma in the society which, according to 2008 statistics, has claimed approximately 25 million lives since the first infection was documented in the early 1980s. It is also estimated that the number of people living with the condition is approximately 34 million globally, i.e. across all age groups, with women having a 50% share among the adult population living with the disease (Cohen, 2010).

            However, worldwide campaigns have been initiated by the government and non-government organizations around the world, urging people to take care when having sexual encounters with their partners. One way of doing this has been the use of condoms, which is the major protective measure, which has successfully become acceptable to people from across all social, political, and religious divide. This method has recently received a boost after the current catholic pope indicated that he was relenting on his earlier stance that condoms were not a moral way of HIV control (Haas, 2010).  After much debate on the efficiency of condoms as a means of protection, one cannot fail to grasp the fact that some times people especially men, may fail to protect themselves and their partners completely for example as a result of having sex under the influence of drugs, which impair judgment, thereby resulting to poor usage of the condoms. This is one reason why manufacturers have produced female condoms in order to allow women to protect themselves without necessarily depending on their male partners (Cohen, 2010).

            Abstinence and fidelity are advocated as the best natural ways for single and married people to protect themselves from AIDS. Abstinence is refraining from sexual activities waiting for the right time while fidelity is for married and unmarried couples to stick to one sexual partner. However, these couples should ensure that they are tested for HIV before taking further steps to have unprotected sex. On the other hand, reports indicate that there is a new protective mechanism dabbed ‘the condomless protection,’ which is said to be a gel that is inserted into a woman’s vagina and which functions by encapsulating the HIV virus and thereafter turning into liquid and flowing out in form of liquid, discharging the virus in the process. However, this gel is still in its developmental stage and therefore has not been released to the public (Cohen, 2010).

            Most importantly, there are reports indicating that an HIV vaccination could be released into the market in the not far future. According to the Daily News, researchers in the US identified 3 crucial antibodies, in a 60-year-old man, which are said to suppress approximately 91% of HIV and related pathogens. As a result, they are working on the technicalities of creating a vaccine which will trigger the human body to produce similar antibodies. However, the researchers indicate that this process may take a while as they do not want to produce a vaccine with a low-efficiency rate such as which had been in the trial process in Thailand, and which showed an efficiency rate of 30% (Black, 2010).