Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Russia for the Gold

While many are excited about the chance to eat M&M's in the simulation, my thoughts are turned away from the enjoyable little candies and the fact that I am terrible at following a scheduled pill regiment. The purpose of the simulation comes into play after all. From everything that I've learned so far about HIV/AIDS, I appreciate the fact that I am a healthy and young individual that does not have to bear this particularly sorrowful responsiblity. I like to think of AIDS in the way that Catherine Wyatt-Morley described it during an excerpt from her diary AIDS Memoir: Diary of a HIV-Positive Mother. AIDS is much like a cross that some people are forced to bear. Those who are healthy and bear no burden should not judge them based off of AIDS because sooner or later, we will all bear a cross of our own.


Did You Know...??



Over the decades since HIV/AIDS was first discovered, it has changed hands as too what groups become the largest group of newly infected or most at risk. In America and most of the Western world we have seen that gay's are the most affected. However while areas like the Western countries and Sub Saharan Africa which are taking steps to prevent and reduce newly infected rates, Eastern Europe and Central Asia are taking the lead. Unlike America where the highest rate is passed MSM (men having sex with men), Russia's transmission acounts almost solely from Injecting drug users and women who have sex with those drug users. According to avert.com, 90% of Eastern Europe's new infections come from Russia and Ukraine alone. In 2007, 65% of newly infected cases were from male drug injectors. 83% of all of the people who know their infection history account for transmission through sharing needles. In 2007, 44% of newly infected women recieved the virus through having sex with men who were HIV positive through drug use with another 35% infected directly through drug use.

Reference List:

-Web: HIV and AIDS in Russia Eastern Europe & Central Asia. Updated 3/11/10. Avert.org. Retrieved 3/24/10 from http://www.avert.org/aids-russia.htm.

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2 comments:

  1. justinbooker22March 26, 2010 at 9:26 PM

    The information on the HIv epidemic in eastern europe was interesting. For drug use to make up that large of a percentage of the different causes of HIV is very different than what you hear of in America. I wonder if there is a stigma in those regions differeing from the stigma of those infected with HIV in America. I wonder if an HIV positive European is automatically looked at as a drug addict?

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  2. TeachUCFApril 8, 2010 at 2:15 PM

    I like Avert.org, but I know there are other sources out there. You should try to use some of them in your next blog. People reading your blog and other students will think that only avert.org is the only source on all things HIV. Although you are seeing an increase in IV drug transmission, you also have to watch the concurrent increase in heterosexual transmission because of the women who have injecting drug users as partners.

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