HIV and it’s
prevention
The Picture
One has HIV,
one doesn’t deserve to live. This has been the traditional mentality of certain
orthodox communities in the world and this sure, needs to change today. A
person suffering from ACQUIRED IMMUNODEFICIENCY SYNDROME ( AIDS) isn’t
necessarily someone having multiple sexual encounters with multiple partners, This conventional train of thoughts need to stop now. With an attempt to put
some light of the day on this highly disputable social topic, here’s everything
you need to know about HIV and AIDS
Clearing out the misconceptions :
HIV is not a
disease! HIV is the organism ( virus ) causing the disease whereas AIDS is the
disease manifested. HIV is short for HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS.
As the name
suggests, it renders the affected individual deficient of immunity and thus ,
makes one more susceptible to secondary infections. That’s how HIV works,
doesn’t itself cause a disease but makes the individual more prone to other
infections , thus rendering him morbid. Having said that, this disease is one
of the most less understood disease in current times and therefore has an
indistinct treatment.
Prevention is therefore the best way of cure. This can be
achieved by-
-
Use
of condoms:
Condoms have shown effective decrease in the number of HIV infected
population , by reducing the transmission at source. Patients infected with HIV
, when use a condom
, fail to transmit the virus to the partner, thus
decreasing the disease multiplication
-
Pre
exposure prophylaxis:
This essentially includes treating individual with an already
compromised immunity can be (acquired/
congenital/ developmental), with anti retroviral drugs. These drugs prevent
viral multiplication in the host body and thus provide an effective defense
-
Prevention
of vertical transmission :
Meaning prevention of mother to son transmission,
this involves treating the mother with antiretroviral therapy during her time
of pregnancy, feeding the born child with bottle feed milk instead of
breastfeeding, from an infected mother, etc.
-
Effective
blood screening programmes:
a Various institutes today offer blood collection,
which is used for blood transfusion, cryo therapy, fresh frozen plasma
preparation, etc. A lot of times, these blood collection drives are employed by
sub-experienced staff, and this has led to multiple occasions of blood
infection, in which HIV has found to be one of the mainstay infections. If this
human error could possibly be eliminated, a major chunk of infection can be
barred , thus lowering down the AIDS incidence in the nation
-
Tattoos
:
Many a times, the tattoo professionals fail to use sterile syringes and this
may lead to HIV transmission from an infected person to a healthy one. Thus
tattoos are highly disadvocated and even if they’re encouraged, sterility needs
to be maintained
These are the
basic principles one must keep in mind to prevent transmission of this
seriously fatal disease. AIDS is one of the most severely debilitating disease
and it’s prevention is the only definite method of cure