Human Immune-deficiency Virus (HIV)!
The Human Immune-deficiency Virus (HIV) causes Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) through contact with the tissue fluids of infected individuals, especially through sexual contact. As it reduces an individual’s resistance to disease, it causes infected individuals to suffer from a large number of environment-related diseases and reduces the ability of infected individuals to go about their normal lives. It saps their strength, leads to skin lesions (Kaposi’s sarcoma) and they become increasingly vulnerable to any air -or water-borne pollutant, until they eventually die.
In sub-Saharan Africa, where the infection has become highly prevalent, it is leading to great suffering and worsening poverty. These patients become unable to work and their usual source of incomes generation is lost. An increasing proportion of the poor are affected. Incomes lost due to the stigma of HIV/AIDS are usually met by the suffers by overexploiting their resource base, as they are not in any position to think of the long-term future.
In Africa, this has led to degradation of the ecosystem and an increase of pressures from other impacts such as overuse of medicinal plants and poaching for wildlife. In South Africa, for example, people have a mistaken belief that turtle eggs can cure HIV/AIDS, thus leading to the eggs being over – harvested.
When males die of the disease, agricultural work has to be taken over by already over-burdened women and children, affecting land management and productivity. Providing balanced diets and nutritional support for these poverty stricken patients can be partially addressed by better natural resource management like afforestation, access to clean water and wholesome food.
HIV/AIDS have a serious impact on the socioeconomic fabric of society. By 2002, India had an estimated 3.97 million infected individuals. There is a great need to organize AIDS education on prevention and management of the disease. This needs to be done through the formal educational sector and by using non-formal methods.
Education is also important to reduce the stigma and discrimination against these patients. In India, women who are not socially empowered are at a great disadvantage as they are powerless to demand safe sex from their partners. Women also have an added burden of caring for HIV – infected husbands. This produces enormous economic stresses on their family. HIV in India is rapidly moving from being a primarily urban disease to rural communities.
Research in Nepal has shown a linkage between rural poverty, deforestation and a shift of population to urban areas resulting in a rising number of AIDS patients. Prior to 1992, it was mainly seen in males who migrated to urban centers.
In more recent times, a growing number of women are moving to Indian cities as sex workers. Women engaged in prostitution find it difficult to make partners take protective measures, such as the use of condoms that provide safe sex. A large proportion became victims of the diseases.
Blood transfusion from an infected person can also lead to HIV/AIDS in the recipient, as well as drug abuse by sharing needles with an infected person. However, the most important measure to prevent AIDS is the proper use of condoms that form a barrier to the spread of the virus during intercourse.