Diagram of effect of hiv aid. There is no cure for hiv but treatment with hiv medicines called antiretroviral therapy or art can slow or prevent hiv from advancing from one stage to the. Aids or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is the potentially fatal disease caused by hiv or human immunodeficiency virus. Hiv usually leads to aids acquired immune deficiency syndrome where the hiv infects and destroys the t lymphocytes so the immune system is impaired. This puts you at an increased risk of many infections including a herpes virus called cytomegalovirus.
Without treatment with hiv medicines hiv infection advances in stages getting worse over time. Aids patients often die. The three stages of hiv infection are 1 acute hiv infection 2 chronic hiv infection and 3 acquired immunodeficiency syndrome aids. Aids the acronym for acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
Aids is a disease which has the following elements. Zimmuno compromised status demonstrated by a low t cell count. Hivaids has had a large impact on society both as an illness and as a source of discrimination. 1 in 2005 alone there were 41 million new hiv 1 infections and 28 million aids deaths.
Timeline for hiv infection immune responses and window period for tests figure 8 shows the range of times that people can take to respond to hiv infection. While no cure exists for hiv or aids the damage caused by these diseases can be treated. Prevention and education can keep the diseases from spreading. If the hiv infection advances to aids the body becomes prone to opportunistic infections.
When a comparator group is used and there are unmeasured impacts of hivaids on the comparator group the household costs of hivaids can be underestimated. Hiv causes severe damage to the immune system. Hiv can also be transmitted by using infected needles for injecting drugs blood transfer. Hivaids in the workplace.
Zthe presence of either an opportunistic infection or aids related cancer. The earliest marker is hiv viral load. Wednesday march 28 2012 200am. In addition to harming the immune system hiv and aids damage the other systems in the body including the respiratory nervous gastrointestinal and skin systems.
Za confirmed positive test for hivaids. The disease also has large economic impacts. You can see why sexual activity had a huge impact on the spread of the virus. If no comparators are used the household hiv cost analysis will use the assumption that non hiv infected households would have no cost of ill health which will overestimate the impact of hivaids.
There are many misconceptions about hivaids such as the belief that it can be transmitted by casual non sexual contact. An estimated 386 334460 million people live with hiv 1 worldwide while about 25 million have died already. South african companies are losing profit because of hivaids.