“AIDS is the disease of poverty”
95 percent of the 33 million people living worldwide with AIDS and HIV live in developing countries. 20 million people have died as a result of being infected with the HIV virus. It has left over 15 million children parentless. About 70 percent of the population that are infected with the HIV virus lives in Sub-Saharan Africa. People in industrialized countries when diagnosed with HIV may have twenty years to live, but a person diagnosed with HIV in Africa only has an average of 5-7 years.
The poor account for the most infected in Africa.
The poor are less privilege and have fewer resources to survive on. Opportunities are grabbed away from the indigent because of financial problems. Education, health status, and labor opportunities are sacrificed each day for immediate survival. Poor people are marginalized socially and politically; thus, they are alienated by the community and many educational programs about STDS and HIV bypass or exclude most of the poor. Most do not even know that they may have contracted an STD, and they continue to pass diseases around. When the poor are educated about HIV, they usually do not change their behavior because it is difficult to abstain from sexual behavior when the needs outweigh the benefits of waiting.
Once a family member has been diagnosed with the AIDS, the family is under an extreme burden to care for the family member and make up their productivity in some manner. It pulls the family into even more strain and poverty. Once the family member dies from the virus they leave many children orphaned. When children become orphaned by parents that died of AIDS they usually become ostracized by the community. The community is aware and fearful that their parents died of AIDS. People are simply fearful of the virus because they are not educated on the subject. They are not even aware how the disease is contracted; thus, childern orphaned by parents that died of AIDS are given little support from the community and the children have little chance for opportunities because of ignorance. This digs a bigger hole of poverty for the people affect by HIV and AIDS.
Other major issues that continues the vicious cycle is transmission during birth. Infected pregnant mothers in poverty do not have enough resources for pre-natal care and drugs that could prevent the transmission of the HIV virus to the child.
The HIV virus is also passed down by breast milk to the child. Women in poverty do not have enough financial assets to purchase baby formula and are forced to feed the child their infected breast milk.
What upsets me the most is the alienation the orphaned children experience from the communities. Simple education could stop this.
