Kelly Kruszewski's List: Global Issues Project Kelly Kruszewski

• Ten million young people (aged 15–24) and almost 3 million children under 15 are living with HIV.
• it takes up to 10 years from infection to illness,
• In the absence of massively expanded prevention efforts, the AIDS in Africa death toll will continue rising for another decade.
• In South Africa, HIV prevalence rates fell to 15.4% in 2001 (down from 21% in 1998) for pregnant women under 20.

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• UGANDA has, over the years, emerged as a role model in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa and globally. This can be attributed to the Government's effort, broad-based partnerships and effective public education campaigns.
• The HIV prevalence rate has reduced from 30% in the early 1980s to the current 6.4% threshold,
• New HIV infections were estimated at 70,170 cases, with AIDS cases at 73,830 and deaths at 75,290 in 2002.
• Health experts say the last five years have seen an increase in the HIV infection rate. Ironically, the 67% rise of HIV infections occurs among marrieds.
• Currently, there are over 1.2 million Ugandans living with HIV/AIDS, but only 400,000 access anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs). A total of 135,000 new infections are registered annually, including 30,000 children and 700,000 women.
• In the developed world, a person starts using ARVs as soon as they test positive. This is not the case in Uganda where ARVs are recommended only when the CD4 count falls below 250.
• ARVs also cause diabetes because they cause high appetite which results in obesity and high blood pressure.
• "We want a person to go to a health centre and get their results in less than 12-hours," says Kakooza. "Not the three days one needed to know their HIV in the past." In a rallying call, Akol urges couples which are HIV-positive to give up having children.
• TASO later became the largest indigenous AIDS service organisation providing HIV/AIDS services in Uganda and Africa, providing emotional and medical support to many thousands of people who are HIV-positive.
• behaviour change such as increased abstinence and monogamy, a rise in the average age of first sex, a reduction in the average number of sexual partners and more frequent use of condoms.
• "People know that HIV kills, but they live reckless lives,"
• "Telling them the same thing would not yield any success."
• When 600 men and women between 20 and 29 years were interviewd, 20% said they used condoms with a new partner, 25% only used them once they had sex with people they did not trust.

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• Millions of children have been orphaned in Africa as a result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
• AIDS orphans are left to fend for themselves, living on the streets
• AIDS orphans are found throughout the world, but eight out of ten of these children live in sub-Saharan Africa.
• HIV stands for human immunodeficiency virus, and typically develops into acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), a disease that destroys the immune system and ultimately kills the patient.
• With no family safety net, AIDS orphans often suffer from poor health, psychological distress, and are vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.
• A small number of adoption agencies in the United States, Europe, Australia, and other countries work with African governments to arrange for healthy AIDS orphans
• The HIV/AIDS epidemic is increasing already high poverty levels throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
• number of deaths from HIV/AIDS has depleted human resources, weakening the education system as teachers die, reducing agricultural productivity, and straining industrial sectors.
• as women often have less access to treatment, less education, and fewer opportunities to find work.

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• HIV is a virus that gradually attacks immune system cells.
• It can be years before HIV has damaged the immune system enough for AIDS to develop.
• here is still no cure for AIDS.
• An estimated two million people died in 2008 alone.
• Although there is no cure for AIDS, HIV infection can be prevented, and those living with HIV can take antiretroviral drugs to prolong the onset of AIDS.
• In many resource-poor countries antiretroviral treatment is not widely available.
• Many people are never tested for HIV and only become aware they are infected with the virus once they have developed an AIDS-related illness.
• Sometimes people taking treatment are unable to adhere to, or tolerate the side effects of drugs.
• Around 2.7 million people became infected with HIV in 2008. Sub-Saharan Africa has been hardest hit by the epidemic; in 2008 over two-thirds of AIDS deaths were in this region.

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• illness and death
• • 15 million Africans have died from AIDS
    Fewer than 1 in three africans who need treatmetnt actually recieve it
• 1.5 million adults and children died
• 15 million Africans have died from AIDS
• turn to sex work
• medical care and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, a
• IDS has played a more significant role in the reversal of human development than any other single facto

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• Sub-Saharan Africa continues to be the worst affected region in the world
• with almost 25 million people living with HIV, of whom over 2 million are children under the age of 15 years. In 2006 alone, almost 8,000 adults and children died of AIDS each day.
• entirely preventable disease

  • it can be prevented without medicine by using a condom
• Some countries have reached 60 percent of HIV positive pregnant women
• Antiretroviral therapy has increased more than eight-fold in Africa,
• 59 percent of all HIV infected persons in Africa are women and young women aged 15 to 25 are at least three times (and in some places four or five times) more likely to become infected than men in the same age group

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• researchers discovered the source of HIV itself. This lay with a species of chimpanzee known as Pan troglodytes troglodytes, which lives in western Africa
• Scientists had long known that AIDS originated in Africa, where the majority of the world's AIDS cases still are found. The disease first appeared in the United States in 1981, when two patients were diagnosed with a form of pneumonia, as well as Kaposi's sarcoma, a type of cancer that had previously only struck people of Mediterranean origin aged 60 years and older
• HIV can be subdivided into HIV-1 and HIV-2. Individuals who have HIV-2 seem to take longer to develop AIDS
• The strain of HIV found in particular species of chimpanzee called P. troglodytes was HIV-1, the more virulent of the two.
• One was the matter of exactly how and when the virus crossed over from P. troglodytes to humans.

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• The South African leader has just announced a barrage of new HIV and Aids commitments that he bills as "the opening of a new era" in the fight against the disease.
• The new policies call for earlier treatment for all patients diagnosed with Aids or tuberculosis, the biggest killer of HIV positive people; a huge expansion of HIV testing; for pregnant women to receive anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) to reduce the number of infected babies being born; and for all babies who test positive to receive drug therapy.
• The country of 50 million has some 5.3 million people infected with HIV, by far the highest number of any country in the world. There have been an estimated 413,000 new infections this year alone. Someone dies of HIV-related illness every two minutes in South Africa.
• There are still nearly 1.5 million people with HIV not getting ARVs, of whom more than 100,000 are children.
• At present life-prolonging anti-retro viral drugs that have transformed the life expectancy of HIV sufferers in the industrialised world are only available to HIV positive South Africans whose immunity levels have already fallen dangerously low.
• From April 2010, pregnant women and patients with both tuberculosis and AIDS will receive treatment if their CD4 or T-cell counts are 350 or less.
• Spending on HIV and Aids will, in this context, have to increase by 20 per cent each year until 2014

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• Swedish International Development Co-operation Minister Gunilla Carlsson participated in what she called the "amazing event" - even to the extent of having an Aids test.
• She said afterwards that Europe and Sweden would follow Zuma's lead by throwing greater weight behind the campaign.
• Carlsson, who also represented the EU at the event as Sweden currently holds the EU presidency, said the leadership Zuma had taken yesterday would make a significant contribution to combating the Aids pandemic not only in South Africa but in the rest of Africa.
• She said first at the South Africa-EU summit in Kleinmond and then yesterday, Sweden and the EU had received an indication that Zuma would take a different approach from that of former president Thabo Mbeki.

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• Female deaths due to HIV/AIDS had quadrupled in the period from 1997 to 2004
• sharp increase in death rate due to HIV and related diseases is of great concern.
• "We cannot estimate the extent of the disease if we are not diligent in describing the cause of death,"
• South Africa buries an estimated 900 AIDS patients every day -- many of them killed by tuberculosis.
• The country of 47.4 million included about 24.1 million women, 15.3 million children under 15 and 3.7 million people older than 60.

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• MANY ward councillors are dying young, probably of Aids-related illnesses, which could contribute to "ineffective local government" in future.
• The age expectancy of councillors appeared to be 51 years. Of the ward councillors interviewed, 17% said a colleague had died of Aids and 59% said they had lost a family member, friend or relative to Aids.
• The shortage of skilled staff within municipalities, anecdotal evidence of high absenteeism, and the illnesses and deaths "are all indicative of a silent but worrying impression of institutional incapacity in South Africa's local government structures", the study concludes.
• "Although it cannot be pinned on HIV/Aids, the description fits advancing HIV-related infections. This has key implications for productivity
• Rising numbers of Aids deaths would deplete the expertise in local government, causing a widening gap between the electorate's expectations and the ability of municipalities to deliver, resulting in what the study calls "local government fragility

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