AIDS

HIV is a sexually transmitted virus and AIDS is the life-threatening immune failure that occurs late in the progression of HIV. AIDS was once in the top ten cause of death in the USA but has dropped out owing to better treatments and reduced transmission.
Very early stages of HIV just after infection resemble the flu or another viral infection. There then follows a latent stage with no symptoms, and then an early AIDS stage with various symptoms, many of them non-specific and easy to misdiagnose. AIDS becomes much more characteristic in the latter stages of the disease where immune failure becomes almost total.
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is the result of an infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). This virus attacks selected cells of the immune, nervous, and other systems impairing their proper function.
Though the current HIV infection rate in India is less than 1 percent, this nation of over one billion people is likely to face a crisis similar to that of sub-Saharan Africa unless effective prevention measures are implemented quickly.
There are already an estimated 5.1 million HIV-positive people in India—more than in any other country aside from South Africa. But even this figure may significantly underestimate the actual number of those with HIVAIDS, as many people hesitate to report their HIV status for fear of being stigmatized by family and friends, as well as by hospitals and professional health care workers.
The majority of HIV infections occur through sexual contact, with blood transfusions, injection drug use, and mother-to-child transmission also accounting for some infections. Though the government of India has designed various programmes to help prevent the further spread of HIV, a lack of funding and poor infrastructure have limited these efforts. India is also at war with poverty, illiteracy, and gender inequality, all of which make the fight against AIDS more challenging.
In particular, the social and economic disparities between men and women have greatly impacted the spread of HIV. Many married men hold the view that marital sexual relations are for procreation while sexual relations outside marriage are for enjoyment. Men are much more likely to engage in extra-marital affairs, while women have little power to insist on condom use. There is a high level of domestic abuse, and fear of violence often deters women from getting tested, revealing their HIV status, or seeking treatment.
There are an estimated four million prostitutes in India. By the mid-1990s, a quarter or more of sex workers in cities such as New Delhi, Hyderabad, Madurai, Pune, Tirupati, and Vellore tested positive for HIV. In Mumbai (Bombay), the prevalence of HIV infection among sex workers was nearly 60 percent in 2000, according to India’s National AIDS Control Organisation.
While heterosexual transmission is assumed to be the primary route of infection, there is also a significant level of male-to-male sexual activity. Truck drivers in India are known to have multiple sexual relationships with both men and women. Moving through the major cities of India, they often visit female or male sex workers every two to three days, then return home and spread the infection to their rural villages through their wives, who in turn transmit HIV to their children. According to UNAIDS, in 2002 HIV prevalence among women attending antenatal clinics is higher than 1 percent in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur, Nagaland, and Tamil Nadu.
The Indian government has initiated several promising prevention and intervention programmes targeting at-risk populations. However, the taboos surrounding HIV and sexuality in general remain strong, and the country’s AIDS awareness programs have often failed to produce significant behavioral change. Prevention programmes will have to address issues of social and economic inequality in order to effectively target vulnerable segments of the population, including women, injection drug users, and men who have sex with men.