When Did They Find Out How Aids Was Transmitted

How Is Hiv Transmitted Or Spread

The following are the means by which the HIV virus is spread:

• Vertical transmission. HIV can be spread to babies born to, or breastfed by, mothers infected with the virus.

• Sexual contact. In adults and adolescents, HIV is spread most commonly by sexual contact with an infected partner. The virus enters the body through the lining of the vagina, vulva, penis, rectum, or abraded or irritated tissues in the lining of the mouth through sexual activity.

• Blood contamination. HIV may also be spread through contact with infected blood. However, due to the screening of donated blood for evidence of HIV infection, the risk of acquiring HIV from blood transfusions is extremely low.

• Needles. HIV is frequently spread by sharing needles, syringes, or drug use equipment with someone who is infected with the virus. Transmission from patient to health care worker, or vice-versa, through accidental sticks with contaminated needles or other medical instruments, is rare.

No known cases of HIV/AIDS have been spread by the following:

• Saliva

• Malaise

• Enlarged lymph nodes

An HIV-infected child is usually diagnosed with AIDS when the immune system becomes severely damaged or other types of infections occur. As the immune system deteriorates, complications begin to develop. The following are some common complications, or symptoms, of the onset of AIDS. However, each child may experience symptoms differently. Symptoms may include:

Prevention: The Best Strategy

Even before CDC was designated in 1986 as the lead federal agency to inform and educate Americans about AIDS, the agency worked with uncommon flexibility with state and local public health agencies and community-based organizations to reach people most at risk. Science-based guidelines were translated into messages for target groups about how to make healthy choices, and how to prevent the spread of the disease. Other campaigns were designed to fight against stigma and fear by informing people about the nature of the disease, teaching tolerance and compassion for those who were HIV positive.

Displayed here are a set of slides from the HIV/AIDS Library and Narrative used by the Wisconsin Department of Health and Human Services in 1989 to train community-based AIDS service organizations. Furthermore, since testing became available in 1985, CDC began providing federal funds to establish an extensive system of alternate testing and counseling sites, leading to the first nationwide HIV- and AIDS-related prevention program. Today, testingknowing ones HIV statusis a key strategy in AIDS prevention.

Homeless People And Intravenous Drug Users In New York

A volunteer social worker called Betty Williams, a Quaker who worked with the homeless in New York from the seventies and early eighties onwards, has talked about people at that time whose death would be labelled as “junkie flu” or “the dwindles”. In an interview for the Act Up Oral History Project in 2008, she said: “Of course, the horror stories came, mainly concerning women who were injection-drug users … who had PCP pneumonia , and were told that they just had bronchitis.” She continues: “I actually believe that AIDS kind of existed among this group of people first, because if you look back, there was something called junkie pneumonia, there was something called the dwindles that addicts got, and I think this was another early AIDS population way too helpless to ever do anything for themselves on their own behalf.”

Julia Epstein writes in her book Altered Conditions: Disease, Medicine and Storytelling that: “As we uncover more of the early history of HIV infection, it becomes clear that by at least the 1970s the virus was already making major inroads into the immune systems of a number of diverse populations in the United States and had for some time been causing devastation in several countries in Africa.”

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What Are The Symptoms Of Hiv/aids

The first signs of HIV infection may be flu-like symptoms:

• Swollen lymph nodes
• Mouth ulcers

These symptoms may come and go within two to four weeks. This stage is called acute HIV infection.

If the infection is not treated, it becomes chronic HIV infection. Often, there are no symptoms during this stage. If it is not treated, eventually the virus will weaken your body’s immune system. Then the infection will progress to AIDS. This is the late stage of HIV infection. With AIDS, your immune system is badly damaged. You can get more and more severe infections. These are known as opportunistic infections .

Some people may not feel sick during the earlier stages of HIV infection. So the only way to know for sure whether you have HIV is to get tested.

How Can I Take Care Of Myself While Living With Hiv

It’s very important to take your medications as prescribed and to make sure you dont miss appointments. This is called treatment adherence.

If you miss medications, even by accident, HIV can change how it infects your cells , potentially causing your medications to stop working. If your schedule prevents you from taking medications on time or making it to appointments, talk to your healthcare provider.

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What Can I Expect If I Have Hiv

If youre diagnosed with HIV, its important to know that those living with HIV who follow treatment guidelines can live full lives for nearly as long as those without HIV.

If you have a high CD4 count and an undetectable viral load within a year of starting treatment, research suggests youll have the best outcomes, as long as you continue your treatment plan.

You can improve your outlook by:

• Getting tested as part of routine healthcare or if you think youve been exposed.
• Starting ART soon after being diagnosed.
• Taking your medicine every day.
• Keeping your appointments with your healthcare team.

ART can keep blood levels undetectable but cant entirely rid your body of the virus . If you dont take your medication every day, the virus can start multiplying again and mutate, which may cause your medications to stop working.

Left untreated, it can take about 10 years for HIV to advance to AIDS. If you progress to AIDS and it goes untreated, you can expect to live about three years more.

For those on treatment, if you have a high CD4 count and undetectable viral load within a year of starting treatment, you can expect to live about as long as someone without HIV. If you have a low CD4 count or a detectable viral load within a year of starting treatment, you may live 10 to 20 years less than someone without HIV.

Canadian Flight Attendant Theory

A Canadian airline steward named Gaëtan Dugas was referred to as “Case 057” and later “Patient O” with the alphabet letter “O” standing for “outside Southern California”, in an early AIDS study by Dr. William Darrow of the Centers for Disease Control. Because of this, many people had considered Dugas to be responsible for taking HIV to North America. However, HIV reached New York City around 1971 while Dugas did not start work at Air Canada until 1974. In Randy Shilts‘ 1987 book And the Band Played On , Dugas is referred to as AIDS’s Patient Zero instead of “Patient O”, but neither the book nor the movie states that he had been the first to bring the virus to North America. He was incorrectly called “Patient Zero” because at least 40 of the 248 people known to be infected by HIV in 1983 had had sex with him, or with a person who had sexual intercourse with Dugas.

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What Are The Stages Of Hiv

HIV has three stages:

Stage 1: Acute HIV

Some people get flu-like symptoms a month or two after theyve been infected with HIV. These symptoms often go away within a week to a month.

Stage 2: Chronic stage/clinical latency

After the acute stage, you can have HIV for many years without feeling sick. It’s important to know that you can still spread HIV to others even if you feel well.

Stage 3: AIDS

AIDS is the most serious stage of HIV infection. In this stage, HIV has severely weakened your immune system and opportunistic infections are much more likely to make you sick.

Opportunistic infections are ones that someone with a healthy immune system could typically fight off. When HIV has advanced to AIDS, these illnesses take advantage of your weakened immune system.

Youre more likely to get certain cancers when you have AIDS. These cancers and opportunistic infections together are called AIDS-defining illnesses.

To be diagnosed with AIDS, you must be infected with HIV and have at least one of the following:

• Fewer than 200 CD4 cells per cubic millimeter of blood .
• An AIDS-defining illness.

Increased Risk Among Individuals With Hemophilia And A Similarity To Hepatitis B

In a December 10, 1982, update on among patients with severe hemophilia A, the CDC reported that all three of the cases reported in the July 16, 1982, MMWR had died and that, in the intervening four months, four additional confirmed cases and one suspected case of AIDS in heterosexual patients had been reported. Two of the patients were children under 10 years of age. In an accompanying editorial note, the CDC stated that the hemophilia patients had all received large amounts of a commercially manufactured anticoagulant known as AHF . None of the patients had any prior opportunistic infections, all had been profoundly lymphopenic, and all had exhibited reversed ratios of : lymphocytes. According to the CDC, these cases provided a new perspective on AIDS by showing that children with hemophilia were at risk for the disease. The report also stated that the number of cases was continuing to increase and that patients with hemophilia might be at significant risk for AIDS. The CDC also reported that a national survey of hemophilia treatment centers had determined that 30 percent or more of all hemophiliacs had abnormal immunological tests. The coincidence of symptoms of AIDS and serologic evidence of hepatitis in the individuals with hemophilia added weight to the theory that AIDS was a disease with a pattern of transmission that mimicked that of hepatitis B .

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Spread To The Western Hemisphere

Further isolated occurrences of this infection may have been emerging as early as 1966. The virus eventually entered gay male communities in large United States cities, where a combination of casual, multi-partner sexual activity and relatively high transmission rates associated with anal intercourse allowed it to spread explosively enough to finally be noticed.

Because of the long incubation period of HIV before symptoms of AIDS appear, and because of the initially low incidence, HIV was not noticed at first. By the time the first reported cases of AIDS were found in large United States cities, the prevalence of HIV infection in some communities had passed 5%. Worldwide, HIV infection has spread from urban to rural areas, and has appeared in regions such as China and India.

Stigma: Educating A Nation

The first year of the AIDS epidemic seemed isolated to a few individuals in a few cities, so it received little media attention. When cases were reported in infants and people with hemophilia, widespread panic struck Americans. Those with AIDS were often stigmatized. In 1985, Ryan White, a teenage hemophiliac living in Indiana, contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion. Parents in his community feared he would expose their children to AIDS, resulting in Ryan being barred from attending school.

In 1986, U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop issued the Surgeon Generals Report on AIDS. In it, he called for a comprehensive program of sex and AIDS education, urged the widespread use of condoms, and dispelled myths that HIV could be spread by mosquitoes. In 1987, CDC launched an unprecedented national campaign, America Responds to AIDS . The goal of ARTA was to increase awareness and understanding of AIDS, to prevent HIV infection, and to encourage people to seek more information and counseling. CDC also began a program to support HIV prevention efforts with national minority organizations that provided HIV prevention expertise to community-based organizations, developed HIV prevention programs targeting minorities, especially African Americans and Hispanics, and supported groups that used culturally sensitive AIDS prevention programs to address their communities needs.

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The Aids Epidemic Arises

Though HIV arrived in the United States around 1970, it didnt come to the publics attention until the early 1980s.

In 1981, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report about five previously healthy homosexual men becoming infected with Pneumocystis pneumonia, which is caused by the normally harmless fungus Pneumocystis jirovecii. This type of pneumonia, the CDC noted, almost never affects people with uncompromised immune systems.

The following year, The New York Times published an alarming article about the new immune system disorder, which, by that time, had affected 335 people, killing 136 of them. Because the disease appeared to affect mostly homosexual men, officials initially called it gay-related immune deficiency, or GRID.

Though the CDC discovered all major routes of the diseases transmissionas well as that female partners of AIDS-positive men could be infectedin 1983, the public considered AIDS a gay disease. It was even called the gay plague for many years after.

In September of 1982, the CDC used the term AIDS to describe the disease for the first time. By the end of the year, AIDS cases were also reported in a number of European countries.

How Can A Woman Reduce Her Chances Of Contracting Hiv

HIV is transmitted through bodily fluids like blood and semen. Using injection drugs, having unprotected sex and having multiple sex partners increases the chances of acquiring HIV. The only way to be absolutely certain you do not become infected with HIV is to not have sex and not use injection drugs. You also can avoid infection by only having one sex partner as long as your partner does not have HIV and has sex only with you. According to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention , using a male or female condom every time you have vaginal or anal sex can greatly lower your risk of infection. Using condoms for oral sex will reduce your risk for other STDs as well. It also is important not to douche, since douching removes some of the normal vaginal bacteria that can protect you from infection.

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The Cdc’s Public Meeting

The purpose of the public meeting on January 4, 1983, was to identify opportunities to prevent . The CDC’s objectives for the meeting were to tell the blood services community about the evidence they had gathered to enlist the help of other PHS agencies, especially the FDA and to formulate recommendations for the prevention of AIDS. According to data presented by the CDC, the manifestations of AIDS appeared 417 months after transmission of infection .

The meeting produced a great deal of debate but no consensus on specific action . Donald Francis, assistant director for medical science of the Division of Virology at the CDC, recommended that the blood banks question donors directly about their sexual behavior and run blood donations through a series of surrogate tests , including a test for the hepatitis B core antibody, which showed an 88 percent correlation with patients who had . Some meeting participants opposed this recommendation because of the cost of the tests and other reasons . Gay activist groups objected to screening measures, claiming that they were discriminatory toward their members. Many meeting participants were not convinced by the evidence that AIDS was transmitted by blood or blood products .

Is There Any Treatment Of A Cure For Hiv/aids

Currently, there is no cure for HIV/AIDS. People living with HIV will need lifelong treatment. The best treatments right now are combinations of prescription drugs. These medications include antiviral treatment, protease inhibitors and other drugs that help people who are living with HIV stay healthy. People living with HIV also can stay healthy by doing things like eating properly, exercising and getting enough sleep.

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Where Does Hiv Come From

HIV is thought to have occurred after people ate chimps that were carrying theSimian Immunodeficiency Virus .

HIV is a type of lentivirus, which means it attacks the immune system. SIV attacks the immune systems of monkeys and apes in a very similar way. This suggests HIV and SIV are closely related, and that SIV in monkeys and apes crossed over to humans to become HIV.

S Of Transmission Of Hiv

Transmitted HIV to enter some body fluids of the infected to a healthy person, such as blood, vaginal secretions, semen, and in fact increases the chance of infection with this virus when suffering from sexually transmitted diseases because of the sores caused by the genitals, which, as it is a gateway to the virus, and can the most important ways in which the statement of the virus that causes AIDS is transmitted as follows:

• Sex: the virus is transmitted from the patient to the partner through the various secretions of the body, due to the presence of sores in the mouth, or cracks in the vagina or rectum, as AIDS spreads dramatically when homosexuals.
• Blood transfusions: , and when the transfer of contaminated blood infected with the human immunodeficiency, and chances of becoming infection in this way small in the United States of America and the developed countries after they take the necessary procedures for the examination of blood samples before being transferred to the person concerned.
• Post-injection: that you share needles with others increases the chance of exposure to infection HIV.
• Transmission of the virus from infected mother to the fetus: This may occur either during pregnancy, either during birth, or even breast-feeding.

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