30 Years And Counting
Officials Say Younger Generation’s View Of HIV Differs
Posted: December 4, 2011 at 5:52 a.m.
Candlelight vigil participants at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Fayettteville join together Thursday around candles arranged into the number “30” to represent the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Young adults lead the state in newly diagnosed cases of HIV, because of less education and more medication, local medical experts said. Education was prevalent during the first 20 years of HIV and AIDS, but during the past decade the illness has become just another sexually transmitted disease to the younger generation, said Mary Wyandt-Hiebert, assistant director of the Pat Walker Health Center at the University of Arkansas.
Brian Crane, an HIV survivor who was diagnosed in 1999, sits with his dog, Tootsie, on Nov. 22 at his home in Bethel Heights....
BY THE NUMBERS
HIV And AIDS
• 1.7 million: People in the U.S. estimated to have HIV
• 600,000: Number of those who have died
• 8,018: Arkansans diagnosed with HIV
• 4,503: Number of those that developed AIDS
• 1,830: AIDS patients in Arkansas who died through 2007. Statewide deaths peaked at 170 in 1995 and have remained in the 60 to 90 per year range.
Source: Staff Report
FAST FACTS
From HIV To AIDS
The Human Immunodeficiency Virus is the virus widely believed to cause Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.
• HIV enters the body usually as a result of unprotected sexual intercourse or other blood to blood contact with someone who already has the virus.
• HIV attacks and weakens the immune system by destroying helper T-cells, an essential part of the immune system.
• HIV is fragile and cannot survive long outside of the body.
• Over time HIV disease damages the body’s immune system, allowing people to get life threatening infections. When the body’s immune system is severely damaged by HIV, an AIDS diagnosis is likely to be made.
• People who have AIDS have a defect in natural immunity against disease. People who have AIDS can get serious illnesses that would not be a threat to anyone whose immune system was functioning normally. These illnesses are referred to as “opportunistic” infections or diseases.
• AIDS is a late stage of HIV disease. There are medications that have helped people living with HIV or AIDS live longer, healthier lives. Some people have lived for more than 20 years and have taken medicines for more than 10 years. But there is no cure.
• HIV is found in blood, semen, vaginal secretions and other body fluids of a person who is infected with HIV.
• A positive HIV antibody test means that you are infected with HIV. Your body is producing the antibodies, the immune system's response to infection, to HIV. You do not necessarily have AIDS. A positive HIV antibody blood test result means you can infect other people with the virus.
Source: Arkansas Department Of Health
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