Between France and America the first official report on Acquired immune deficiency syndrome appeared on June 5 1981 when the US centers for disease control issued its weekly newsletter stating the out break of the illness and unusual death in the united state.
Two tourist returning from the French west Indies has come down with dengue fever, nearly 7,000 children were diagnosed with lead poisoning, doctor report a rare parasitic lung infection that had struck five young men in los-Angeles, all active homosexuals, and three out of minima function. And so it started.
No one involve those early days of Aids-though it wasn't even called that then-could have imagined that scale of pandemic that was unfolding. But now it has out attention so much so that December has been set aside to look back and check on how well were coping with the pandemic or maybe take a head count of survivors of the scourge. How do you mark 21 years of AIDS? With a sense of fear for over 36 million people infected with human immunodeficiency. HIV with deep mourning of the lives lost to the plague that have claim over 22 million lives yet No war on the face of the world is as destructive as the AIDS pandemic; says U.S secretary of state Colin Powell.
In the year 2000. AIDS killed 3 million people world wide, the highest number of people annual death since the disease started. And 53 million were infected with HIV-14, 500 a day “The host frightening thing is that of all of these infections and human suffering. Could have been, can be prevented” said former south-African president Nelson Mandela. Such high infection rates - 600,000 children under age 15 continue in the face of groundbreaking research and discovering on drugs that can turn HIDS into a disease can live with.
At cocktail of drugs has offered hope to most who can afford it in developed world, but for the rest of us, still battle a plague that has charged how we think and how we love, what we teach our children and what words we say in public. Until now, we had lost sight of the fact that new disease can emerge and knock the sucks off the world population with 36 million infected, including 800,000 to 900,000 in the U.S (of whom an estimated 300,000 don't know it) AIDS is now number one cause of death in Africa.
Continent wide it has stolen a generation and imperiled the future. It robs straggling the economics of their workforce, families of their support and children of their parents. A numbering 25.3 million people are infected in sub-Saharan Africa where 24 million people dies in the year 2000, (about 80 percent global total of the year) while the orphan population stand at 13 million, it is expected to leap to 25 million by the year 2000, say de meesok, world bank director of Africa Region human resources development by that year orphan in 12 sub-Saharan will countries constitute 15 - 25 per cent. And U.S census Bureau project opines that life expectancy in the region could drop to 30 years.
The figures are scary. An even carrier is the eventual that awaits every infected person everyone of the nameless sucker-eyed victim. December chalked out of the calendar to sober U.S up about that of infection continue to rise in single year in Eastern Europe nearly 300,000 people Horned H.I.V positive, pushing the number form 420,000 1999 to 700,000 in 2000.
In the U.S the rate is 12.3 per cent among young gag men. In south Africa nation on that has become the capacities of the pandemic, 4.7 million are HIV positive 5000 babies are burn with it every month, and 1 out of every 2 young people will dies of AIDS.
In the federal republic (of Nigeria) the notion circulators that the pandemic is still in it early stage, compared with other countries in Africa. Actual numbers are not forth coming. But HIV prevalence Zone-by-Zone chart showed that as at last year the south zone constituted the highest infection percentage of 7.7, southeast 5.8, north-centre 5.5, North East 5.4, South-West 4.0 and North-West 3.3 percent. At state level Akwa-Ibom tipped the bill at 10.7 percent.
As figures don't flow much on the AIDS awareness channels, actual figures are merely estimate. That leaves a whole bench of people living disease, expectedly in a country whose youth are judge just to be among he most sexually active globally. Many people who are infected with HIV do not know it. Even less have been made to come around to testing. And fewer still would opening admit an infection once tested. And that to wild spread ignorance and ramous cost antiretroviral drug therapy and you have a great formula for a rise infection by a leaps and bounds.
