One of the most notorious and deadly diseases of our time is the troublesome AIDs. It is defined as a disease present in adults and children above the age of 13 with certain conditions indicating the severe compromise of the immune system due to the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection. The symptoms of AIDs are brutal, including weight loss over 5kg, stubborn skin rashes, the persistence of diseases such as Herpes and night sweats. Educating yourself about current disease outbreaks can help you understand what precautions you should take in order to keep you and your family safe and healthy.
Take the time to search for ongoing epidemics by visiting the Current Outbreak List, especially if you are traveling.
The discovery of AIDs dates back to 1981 in a United States laboratory. It is believed to have started from non-human monkeys in Africa and mutated to infect humans in the 1900s. The HIV infection was thought to have entered the United States in 1969. At this point, AIDs was an epidemic as it very quickly spread among certain male groups and by 1978, HIV-1 and it’s presence became extremely prevalent in the homosexual populations of San Francisco and New York.
As AIDs had become accepted as an epidemic in the US, cases of the disease began to appear in other parts of the world, such as South America, Africa, and even Europe. Even more worrying, the evidence suggested that the disease was no longer just limited to homosexual men. This rapid upturn in common cases prompted the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1990 to provide an estimate that up to a million people worldwide could have the disease. Since then, the problem has dramatically amplified, with the number of cases increasing uncontrollably. As of 2001, WHO has now estimated that 40 million people across the world are concealing the HIV. Countries such as China, Russia, and India are also beginning to see signs that the disease is making its way into their shores.
Not only has AIDs converted into a pandemic, but the rate at which it has done so is also a huge cause for concern and organizations such as WHO must discover ways to halt this disease and fast.
