What
is HIV?
H- Human: This particular virus infects human beings.
I- Immunodeficiency: HIV weakens your immune system by destroying cells that
fight disease and infection.
V- Virus: A virus can only reproduce itself by taking over a cell in
the body it has infected.
HIV is a lot like other viruses, including those that cause
the “flu” or the common cold. But there is an important difference, over
time, your immune system can clear most viruses out of your body. That
isn’t the case with HIV. You can’t seem
to get rid of it. Scientists are still
trying to figure out why.
HIV can hide for long periods of time in the cells of your
body and that it attacks a key part of your immune
system—T-cells or CD4 cells. Your body
has to have these cells to fight infections and disease, but HIV takes over, uses them to make more copies of
itself, and then destroys them.
Overtime, HIV can destroy so many of your CD4 cells that
your body can’t fight infections and diseases
anymore. When that happens, HIV
infection can lead to AIDS
Health Disparities-HIV/AIDS
Despite
prevention efforts, some groups of people are affected by HIV/AIDS, viral
hepatitis, STDs, and TB more than other groups of people. The occurrence of
these diseases at greater levels among certain population groups more than
among others is often referred to as a health disparity. Differences may occur
by gender, race or ethnicity, education, income, disability, geographic
location and sexual orientation among others. Social determinants of health
like poverty, unequal access to health care, lack of education, stigma, and
racism are link to health disparities. http://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/healthdisparities/
No comments:
Post a Comment