NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
While the federal governments investment in treatment and research is helping people with HIV/AIDS live longer and more productive lives, HIV continues to spread at a staggering national rate of over 40, 000 new infections per year. The following data represent the total reported AIDS cases in Georgia through year-end 2002: 1998 8, 785 1999 9, 663 2000 10, 290 2001 11, 269 2002 12, 320 For 2003, according to the information given on July 7 th, there were 26, 373 cases (1). It is the position of AIDS Action that the current HIV/AIDS statistics represent only a portion of the epidemic in the U. S. The data above only captures the HIV cases that were confirmed through testing and reporting; thus, it does not reflect the demography and size of the HIV positive population that has not yet been tested or reported.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided Georgia with $ 8, 516, 636 for HIV prevention programs. These funds were allocated to state and local health departments and community-based organizations to finance counseling and testing programs, public information and health education / risk reduction activities, and onitoring / surveillance programs. The Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act, enacted in 1990 and reauthorized in 2000, is the centerpiece of the federal governments efforts to improve the quality and availability of care for medically underserved individuals and families affected by HIV/AIDS. The CARE Act, administered by the HIV/AIDS Bureau of the Health Resources and Services Administration, provides funding to states, territories, and other public and private nonprofit entities to develop, organize, coordinate, and operate more effective and cost-efficient systems for the delivery of essential health care and support services to people living with HIV/AIDS and their families (5).
HIV/AIDS has become a "disease of young people, " as half of the estimated five million new HIV infections worldwide each year occur among people ages 15 to 24, according to a United Nations Population Fund report released on Wednesday, London's Guardian reports. UNFPA's 2003 State of the World's Population report, titled "Making One Billion Count: Investing in Adolescents' Health and Rights, " found that a young person between the ages of 15 and 24 becomes infected with HIV every 14 seconds, equivalent to about 6, 000 new cases every day. With nearly half of the world's 6. 3 billion people under age 25, if the HIV/AIDS pandemic is left unchecked, it could significantly slow the growth of the world's population, according to the report. The world's population is expected to rise to 8. 9 billion people by 2050; however, that number could be cut to about seven billion if no steps are taken to curb the epidemic, the Guardian reports (Boycott, Guardian, 10 / 9).
In addition, HIV/AIDS disproportionately affects women -- 67 % of HIV-positive young people in sub-Saharan Africa and 62 % in South Asia are women. The disease is spreading fastest in sub-Saharan Africa, where 8. 6 million young people are estimated to be HIV-positive, followed by South Asia, where an estimated 1. 1 million young people are HIV-positive. The changing demographics of HIV/AIDS in the U. S.
are stirring a host of discomfiting race-related concerns about the best way to fight the deadly disease these days. The latest statistics show that African-Americans account for 54 % of the 43, 000 or so new cases of HIV infection in the U. S. last year, up from 35 % of new cases in 1993, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Most troubling, in 2001 AIDS became the leading cause of death for African-Americans between 25 and 44 years of age. That AIDS disproportionately has affected African-Americans is not new; in 1998, the number of African-Americans living with AIDS surpassed that of whites for the first time. But the trend is deepening with each passing year. As the disease enters its third decade in this country, many activists say the government is not being imaginative enough in how it deals with this burgeoning racial disparity (2). The problem, say pubic health officials, is exacerbated by a sense among many Americans that the disease is now mostly a problem in Africa and other poor nations, and no longer the major U. S.
health concern it was in the 1980 s and early 1990 s. "AIDS is not a primary issue in this country anymore, period, " says Phill Wilson, a longtime AIDS activist and founder of the Black AIDS Institute, a non-profit in Los Angeles created in 1999 to raise awareness of the disease's impact on the African-American community. "But the fact is this: The epidemic has not let up in black America. " Jennifer Kates, an HIV policy analyst at Kaiser Family Foundation, agrees, noting that the racial character of AIDS contributes to an increasingly passive concern among Americans about the disease. This, in turn, has reduced public pressure on government health officials and politicians to make fighting HIV/AIDS as imperative as it would likely be if it were raging through general white or even gay white populations. (See a recent Kaiser report on the topic. ) Preventing and treating AIDS among blacks "requires an approach and leadership that is distinctly different in its emphasis from what the government is doing now or has been doing for years, " Mr. Wilson says. This past spring, the CDC announced a major policy shift that appears to be driven, at least in part, by the changing face of AIDS.
With the new plan, called the Advancing HIV Prevention Initiative, the CDC hopes to sharply increase public health efforts designed to prevent people infected with the virus from spreading it to others. This tack differs from previous policy that mostly concentrated on preventing new infections by educating all Americans about avoiding high-risk behaviors such as unprotected sex or the sharing of needles by IV drug users (4). The new plan is designed, for instance, to fund programs to encourage doctors and other health providers, particularly staffers in government-supported community-based health centers that serve many African-Americans, to aggressively dissuade HIV-infected patients from exposing others to their virus. The initiative will also increase funding for HIV testing as a way to help health practitioners identify those people who may unknowingly be at risk of spreading the virus, says Harold Jaffe, who runs the CDC's National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention. The CDC won't formally say this new policy is focused on African-Americans or other minorities. But Dr.
Jaffe says that in providing new funds to the community-based centers, many in poor and urban settings, the CDC is addressing the disease's growing racial disparity. Mr. Wilson maintains the approach is far short of what's needed. He says the CDC and others shouldn't shift funding away from programs designed to prevent people from getting infected in the first place. He says this is especially important because the infection rate is rising so swiftly among adolescent blacks who "clearly aren't hearing the message that certain behaviors put them at very high risk of getting infected, and that once infected, they have a very serious health problem. " Mr.
Wilson believes the federal government should be waging a much more explicit attack on the disease among African-Americans, one that is designed, for example, to counter the profound stigma of AIDS and homosexual behavior in the black community. "We should be saying, this is the problem, here is research showing how to address it and here is a plan of attack and the money to back it, " says Mr. Wilson. Even so, Mr. Wilson acknowledges that addressing AIDS among blacks and other minorities is not an easy task.
For one, "the American black community itself has been very slow to acknowledge the problem, " Mr. Wilson says. For example, homosexual and bisexual behaviors are not openly discussed among blacks as they were among white homosexuals when the epidemic first surfaced in America (3). When one looks deeper in the HIV/AIDS problem it is clearly visible that all money spent by government on AIDS preventing and treating measures are spent nearly in vain. As the primary targets for this virus are homosexuals, drug addicts and blacks the mass media anti AIDS propaganda does not reach the risk group, because of low culture and education of the majority of above mentioned groups.
It is impossible to fight AIDS alone. Government needs to increase the educational and cultures level of the risk group, which in fact is also impossible. Bibliography: web Special report: FY 2002. March 2003. Special Data Request. Holmes, B.
Grants Management. Health Resources and Services Administration. (Requested on March 2003) Wall Street Journal, 9 / 11 / 2003 Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 10 / 09 / 2003 Las Vegas Sun, 10 / 03 / 2003 Kerrigan, D. Peer Education and HIV/AIDS: Concepts, Uses and Challenges Washington, D. C. : HORIZONS/Population Council (1999) 7) Valente, T. and Bharat, U. An evaluation of the use of drama to communicate HIV/AIDS information.
AIDS Education and Prevention 11 (3): 203211 (1999)
Free research essays on topics related to: centers for disease control, hiv positive, hiv aids, african americans, disease control and prevention
Research essay sample on Centers For Disease Control Disease Control And Prevention
