HIV in South Africa Case Study

Document Type:Case Study

Subject Area:Health Care

Document 1

The number of people who are infected is not that high, but the rate of infection is increasing at high rate in past few years. If this rate of infection continues, South Africa will be an HIV/AIDS epidemic. Most of the people who are affected by this infectious disease are the sex workers, children who are born by mothers who are HIV positive, the drug users, the gays and the most of the people in prisons. Risk factors that are of this issue is use of needles that are not sterilized, lack of protection while having sex and inadequate education related to dangers of HIV/ AIDS that includes ways on how it is transmitted and how it can be protected from spreading.

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The social as well as economic impacts of this health issue may include loss of both income and also productivity. The big urban areas like Johannesburg and Cape Town have got high percentage of like 60% of HIV people (Mayosi et al, 2014). This virus spread to people through blood products and also use of dirty needles. Right now, HIV tends to be a concentrated epidemic because almost 3% of the population is infected. If the government of South Africa does not address health issue of HIV, then it will soon be a ‘generalized epidemic’ whereby around 8% of the adult population will be infected. Therefore, it is clear that this health issue has to be taken seriously. There is also addition of 20 % of the young people who are HIV positive and live in the streets of capital city of South Africa either full or part time in the streets.

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10% of population in the prison have cases on HIV. This happens because there is large number of people who are users of intravenous drugs in the prison. Men who have sex with men has well is also risk of spreading HIV, although the cases of men having sex with men has risen with time. The reports of 2016 shows that like 2000 have contracted HIV through this way. Finally the largest risk factor of contracting HIV is because of lack of knowledge regarding the disease and ways in which it can be prevented. Economic and social consequences Both the economic and the social impacts of HIV is vast to the nation of South Africa. This is because the population of South Africa is decreasing.

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If this problem is not looked into, there will be mass killing of around 10 million of people in South Africa by 2025. This will definitely affect the work force of the country. The treatment of accessibility of ARV has to be less expensive. For the government to stop spread of HIV of mother to child, they need to target most of pregnant mothers through education campaigns. Finally, South Africa government need to launch campaign that will help youth in the street and then educate them on dangers of using drugs and having sexual behaviour by use of protection as way of stopping the spread of HIV epidemic. References Cooper, D. , Mantell, J. , Krishnaratne, S. , Mathema, H. & Horn, L. HIV-related stigma and universal testing and treatment for HIV prevention and care: design of an implementation science evaluation nested in the HPTN 071 (PopART) cluster-randomized trial in Zambia and South Africa.

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