Term Paper on "AIDS in South Africa"

r />Depression makes its way into your life pretty soon. A person with a severe disease who is also depressed is not something very pleasant. Try to imagine how things would be if all your family were infected. We are basically condemned to extinction and there is nothing we can do about it. We are forced to ask for social support because we depend on it to a high extent, but the help we are getting is not enough. With so many sick people living together, hygiene becomes an issue.

It is clear that it ought to be maintained, but when everybody is sick and low spirited (not to say desperate), this becomes a difficult task. Knowing that you are slowly dieing changes things in a profound manner. Knowing that your loved ones are also dieing makes things even worse. Under the circumstances in which the financial resources are scarce, the whole thing acquires a rather dramatic dimension. HIV is a disease which condemns you to solitude. If you are poor and infected with a fatal disease, you have little chances of being accepted by the others. Physical and psychological misery is what having AIDS means. And no, I am not talking about Africa, I am talking about the U.S.A. I live in the south of Bronx .

My oldest sister, who was a crack addict has three children, one girl and two boys. All three of them have been diagnosed as being HIV positive. My niece Alexis who is 43 years old is a crack addict. She has three children and all three are HIV positive. My nephew Wayne who is 42 years old is gay. He has one son and he is HIV positive. My other nephew Marvin, who is 44 years old is also gay and has two girls, of which the youngest is HIV positive.

My sister has always lived in the most poverty stricken areas where drugs were rampant. She never finished high school nor did any of her children. Just like in the book "Sizwe's test" even though HIV clinics are close at hand, she chose not to get tested. Her reasoning was that she did not want her friends to know and nor did she want to know herself. Her husband was never tested. Although he was never a drug addict he was sure that she infected him and he had no interest in hearing a doctor confirming it. Helen Epstein suggest "social behavior and conditions are the reasons why transmission is so high in Africa." The author also said that "individuals are infected by the people who they trust and in order to solve this tragic problem that Africa faces, we must get to the root of the problem which in my opinion is the mentality towards the manner in which the disease can be prevented."

Just like my personal example demonstrates, it is safe to say that the spread of HIV is a matter of mentality and education. What happened to my family might have very well happened to a family living in Africa. Researchers who have analyzed the phenomenon declared that the sexual habits of people living in Africa are not different from the ones of those living in other countries, such as the U.S.A. It is obvious that Africans are not more promiscuous than other people, yet the disease is more far spread than anywhere else in the world.

Taking into account the fact that most people are contaminated by individuals that they know and whom they trust. This means that the root of the problem is to be found in the mentality of the people. The members of my family are a relevant example. If my cousin got tested and found out that she was HIV positive then maybe she could have avoided passing the disease to her husband and her children. In this manner four people would have been spared.

One might argue that poverty is the main cause of this situation. To a certain extent this is true. Just as I have mentioned before, neither my cousin nor her children made it through high school. If she had received a better education, perhaps she would have avoided drug use, bad company and in the end her disease (or at least passing it to her children).

Having a good financial situation implies having a good living standard in which education plays a fundamental role. Just like in the case of my family members, there are many African people who live in extreme poverty. This is usually connected with the lack of education and under these circumstances, it is easy to understand how a disease such as AIDS could spread so easily (people are simply not aware of the risks they expose themselves to).

Everybody knows that it is impossible to heal once you have been infected with AIDS. Proper treatment and factors having to do with one's own body might prolong life, but death is a sure denouement for this scenario. In this context, the importance of prevention becomes fundamental.

People ought to be educated in a spirit which allows them to avoid the disease. Once they have the doubt about it, then they ought to be willing to get themselves tested. Tests might help you prolong your own life and improve the condition of your health. In addition it might prevent other people from getting infected. All these issues are directly connected to people's mentality and mentality can be shaped only through educational processes.

In a social context where people live in poor conditions, people tend to ignore things such as medical education. When the main concern is getting food in order to survive, then it is easy to see why other questions such as the prevention of the sexually transmitted diseases are overlooked. Taking into account the huge numbers of deaths and the constant rates of contamination, one can only say that things must change. Africa needs help from the outside. People who are willing… READ MORE