AIDS+in+Africa+Period+4

What are the causes of AIDS in Africa and the effects or impacts it has had on the country and people?

**HIV/AIDS Programs**

The UN reports more than two thirds of all people infected with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa. 22.4 million people are living with HIV. More than 20 million people living in Africa have died from AIDS. Life expectancy has been reduced to 47 years. AIDS continues to be the biggest threat to Africa’s development. A large number of key family members in the prime of their working life, farmers, teachers, shop owners, civil servants and young professionals are dying leaving dependent children and other family members without resources to provide food, shelter, education and other basic necessities. Uganda has been severely affected by the AIDS pandemic. For over 20 years, Uganda has seen death on a massive scale, and many more will die in the years to come. What was once productive farmland has become grave sites, former thriving shops are boarded shut and abandoned. National statistics indicate nearly 100,000 people in Uganda die every year from AIDS. Estimated one million people are living with HIV including 150,000 children. Uganda has over two million orphaned children, 1,200,000 due to AIDS. The toll that AIDS can take on children and young people is dramatic. Not only do they mourn the loss of their parents and loved ones, the very prospect of their survival is at risk. They may be shuffled from relative to relative where they are often abused, used as child labor and in many cases totally abandoned and forced to live on their own where they turn to begging, sex trade, petty crime and other desperate measures to survive. To visit Uganda and witness these children and their daily struggles is a sad and disturbing experience for anyone. Something we all agree should not happen. This problem is exacerbated by poverty, illiteracy, weak education, inadequate and in many villages the total lack of any health care. The problem is further compounded by the low social status of women. In many instances women are exposed to AIDS through unwanted and unsafe relationships against their will. In many rural areas nearly 40% of newborn children have AIDS. HIV infection has many associated illnesses that continue to make its management very difficult. Many who are receiving the ARV drugs continue to die of opportunistic infections which are not easily managed because the drugs are not available and if they are, they are quite expensive for the patients.

HIV-related diseases occupy more than half of all hospital beds. Teachers who are affected by HIV and AIDS are likely to take periods of time off work. Eather they are sick or taken care of those who are.  AIDS has had on average life expectancy is partly attributed to child mortality  **4.1 HIV/AIDS and Poverty ** HIV/AIDS, like all communicable diseases, is linked to poverty. The complex relationship between poverty and HIV/AIDS is central to an understanding of the impact of the epidemic on rural livelihoods. The relationship is bi-directional in that poverty is a key factor in transmission and HIV/AIDS can impoverish people in such a way as to intensify the epidemic itself. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">4.1.1 Poverty as a key transmission factor <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">Thus the relationship between poverty and HIV transmission is not simplistic (Collins and Rau, 2001). The debate on the role of poverty in driving the sexual transmission of HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa is widely acknowledged and accepted in the literature around HIV/AIDS (HSRC, 2001a: 41). Although there are some powerful critiques of the poverty-AIDS argument, which claim that many of the worst affected African countries such as Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa are among the most economically developed in the region, poverty does seem to be a crucial factor in the spread of HIV/AIDS. It should be emphasised that poor people infected with HIV are considerably more likely to become sick and die faster than the non-poor since they are likely to be malnourished, in poor health, and lacking in health attention and medications. **<span style="color: #000000; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">4.2. Regional Migration ** <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">Research in Africa has long demonstrated that the prevalence and patterns of spread of infectious disease are closely associated with patterns of human mobility (SAMP, 2002: 15). Thus the continuous movement of people is an underlying factor in the spread of HIV/AIDS. Numerous studies have established a clear link between elevated HIV seroprevalence and short duration of residence in a locality, settlement or travel along major transportation routes, immigrant status, and international travel to the region (Brockerhoff and Biddlecom, 1999). Large-scale economic migration has been a feature particularly of the southern African region (HSRC, 2001a: 4). Historically, men migrated from Lesotho, Botswana, Swaziland, Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia to South African gold, platinum and diamond mines to seek work. The close proximity of these countries, in particular that of South Africa’s “enclosure” of Lesotho is indicated on the map of Africa presented earlier in this paper. The ease of movement of people has brought with it infections from other parts of the region to “destination” countries such as South Africa and conversely back to other countries. It is important to reiterate that these regional countries are some of the worst affected in the world. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">Massive migration of young, unmarried adults from presumably “conservative” rural environments to more sexually permissive African cities in recent years has been regarded as partly responsible for the much higher infection levels observed in urban than in rural areas (Brockerhoff and Biddlecom, 1999). For example, in South Africa, many male migrants have been forced to separate from their families for long periods and live in overcrowded singe sex hostels. These hostels became sources of clients for sex workers seeking respite from poverty. This resulted in high-risk behaviour which increased the rates of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, which spread rapidly back to the homes of the migrant workers. **<span style="color: #000000; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">4.3. Poverty-driven Commercial Sex Work ** <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">In the absence of alternative opportunities to earn a livelihood for themselves and their households, millions of people sell sex (Collins and Rau, 2001: 13). In discussing the poverty-driven selling of sex, some authors emphasise the importance of recognising that whilst millions engage in commercial sex work on a regular basis, even more people not commonly thought of as “commercial sex workers” find themselves needing to exchange sex for money or goods on an occasional basis (Collins and Rau, 2001: 14, Cohen, 1998: 6). Many mothers have been forced to turn to sexual transactions in order to obtain desperately needed money and in communities characterised by social inequalities, some older men with money procure sex from young females in exchange for gifts or spending money.

<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">Lack of money is an obvious challenge, although a great deal of aid is distributed throughout developing countries with high HIV/AIDS rates. For African countries with advanced medical facilities, <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">[|patents] on many drugs have hindered the ability to make low cost alternatives. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">Natural disasters and conflict are also major challenges, as the resulting economic problems people face can drive many young women and girls into patterns of sex work in order to ensure their livelihood or that of their family, or else to obtain safe passage, food, shelter or other resources. Emergencies can also lead to greater exposure to HIV infection through new patterns of sex work. In <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">[|Mozambique], an influx of humanitarian workers and transporters, such as truck drivers, attracted sex workers from outside the area. Similarly, in the <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">[|Turkana District] of northern <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">[|Kenya], drought led to a decrease in clients for local sex workers, prompting the sex workers to relax their condom use demands and search for new truck driver clients on main highways and in peri-urban settlements. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">When family members get sick with HIV or other sicknesses, family members often end up selling most of their belongings in order to provide health care for the individual. Medical facilities in many African countries are lacking. Many health care workers are also not available, in part due to lack of training by governments and in part due to the wooing of these workers by foreign medical organisations where there is a need for medical professionals. This is done largely through immigration laws that encourage recruitment in professional fields (special skill categories) like doctors and nurses in countries like Australia, Canada, and the United States. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">According to a 2007 report, <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">[|male circumcision] and <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">[|female genital mutilation] were statistically associated with an increased incidence of HIV infection among the females in <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">[|Kenya] and the males in Kenya, <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">[|Lesotho], and <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">[|Tanzania] who self-reported that they both underwent the procedure and were virgins. "Among adolescents, regardless of sexual experience, circumcision was just as strongly associated with prevalent HIV infection." Circumcised adults, however, were statistically less likely to be HIV positive than their uncircumcised counterparts, especially among older age groups. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">Similarly, a randomized, controlled intervention trial in <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">[|South Africa] from 2005 found that male circumcision "provides a degree of protection against acquiring HIV infection [by males], equivalent to what a vaccine of high efficacy would have achieved."
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">Economic factors **
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">Health industry **
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">Medical factors **
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">Circumcision **

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