Statistics- Numbers, Race, Gender

At the end of 2005, the total AIDS count for that year was counted. It reached 437,982 people and that's just in the USA alone. There is thought to be though between 1,039,000 and 1,185,000 people living with AIDS in the USA. This is because many other events have been taken into consideration. Such as, confidential name-base reporting hasn't been set up in all states so anyone can access the information. Also because anonymous tests, home tests for instance, were not included in the numbers. Last is that one in every four people living with HIV has not even had their infection diagnosed or reported.


This image shows the proportions of the different races that have AIDS.




This is how the AIDS victims recieved AIDS within the different genders. Apparently around 77% of AIDS victims are men.



Out of children about 1,411 of them have AIDS from under the age of 13. This is really good considering that they probably got infected from their mothers.


Noble, Rob. "United States Statistics Summary." Avert. 18 Dec. 2006. Avert (International AIDS Charity). 3 Jan. 2007 <http://www.avert.org/statsum.htm>.

How does HIV affect your body?

DiPentima, M. Cecilia. "HIV and AIDS." Kids Health for Kids. June 2005. 12 Dec. 2006 <http://www.kidshealth.org/kid/health_problems/infection/hiv.html>.


People who are HIV positive have been tested and found to have signs of the human immunodeficiency virus in their blood. HIV affects a type of white blood cell called the T lymphocyte (say: lim-fuh-site), or T cell. T cells are one type of "fighter" cell in the blood that help the body fight off all kinds of germs and diseases. Basically, HIV attacks the immune system.

After HIV enters the body, it attaches onto a T cell and works its way inside of that cell. Once inside, the virus completely takes over the T cell and uses it as a virus-making factory to make copies of itself. The newly made viruses then leave the T cell and go on to infect and destroy other healthy T cells as they continue to multiply inside the body. After the virus invades the T cells, they can no longer properly fight infections. This makes your immune system worthless because it's hard to fight off even a simple cold.

Someone who is infected with the virus is called HIV positive. But it may take years for the virus to damage enough T cells for that person to get sick and develop AIDS. And thanks to new medications, someone infected with HIV can stay relatively healthy and symptom-free for many years. The problem is that these medications are very expensive and not available to everyone in the world.

Although the HIV-positive person may feel fine, the HIV virus is silently reproducing itself and destroying T cells. And during this time, the person is still contagious, which means he or she is still able to give the disease to others.

When the person's immune system has weakened and more of the blood's T cells have been destroyed by the virus, the person can no longer fight off infections. This is when he or she gets very sick. A doctor diagnoses a person with AIDS when the person has a very low number of T cells and shows signs of a serious infection.

How do you recieve HIV?

DiPentima, M. Cecilia. "HIV and AIDS." Kids Health for Kids. June 2005. 20 Dec. 2006 <http://www.kidshealth.org/kid/health_problems/infection/hiv.html>.


Most people do not know how HIV is transfer so they don't know how to take the proper precautions. HIV/AIDS can't be transfered like a cold or the flu. It doesn't spread by being in the same room with a person who has it.HIV is passed directly from one person to another. It's passed through body fluids, such as blood.


The majority of people in North America get infected with HIV by:

• having sexual contact with a person who has HIV
  
• sharing needles or syringes (used to inject illegal drugs) with a person who has HIV
  

Other ways of getting HIV can occur when:

• an infected pregnant woman passes it to her unborn child. (This can be prevented by treating the mother and child around the time the baby is delivered.) Because of the risk to an untreated baby, every pregnant woman should be tested for HIV.
  


• a person has a blood transfusion (say: trans-fyoo-zhun) from a fairly large volume of blood. In North America today, all donated blood is tested for HIV, so the risk of getting HIV is less than one in a million.
  

What is AIDS?

A Project of Community Partners, a Nonprofit Organization. AIDS.org. AidsInfoNet.org. 20 Dec. 2006 <http://www.aids.org/factSheets/101-what-is-aids.html>.


AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome

• Acquired means you can get infected with it;
• Immune Deficiency means a weakness in the body's system that fights diseases.
• Syndrome means a group of health problems that make up a disease.

AIDS is caused by a virus called HIV, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. If you get infected with HIV, your body will try to fight the infection. It will make "antibodies," special molecules to fight HIV. A blood test for HIV looks for these antibodies. If you have them in your blood, it means that you have the HIV infection.

Reflection

What I know about my topic. Well my topic is AIDS and I don't know anyone with AIDS. I have though seen the videos in health class just like any other teenager. What I have gathered is that it was labeled the "gay disease" because originally only gay people had it supposedly.

AIDS affects the immune system by killing off the white blood cell count. Therefore, AIDS patients recieve a ton of medications and are always sick. I'm here to do research about this topic and what our government and other governments are trying to do to treat this disease.