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AIDS. Geographic factors and impacts. The origin of AIDS and HIV has puzzled scientists ever since the illness first came to light in the early 1980s. For over twenty years it has been the subject of fierce debate and the cause of countless arguments. The origins of the disease.
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AIDS Geographic factors and impacts
The origin of AIDS and HIV has puzzled scientists ever since the illness first came to light in the early 1980s. For over twenty years it has been the subject of fierce debate and the cause of countless arguments. The origins of the disease
Aids first recognized • Aids was first recognized in the USA in 1980 • The unusual symptoms and cancers were first found in homosexuals • San Francisco and New York were most effected at the time. • There was a high level of homosexuality here. • Aids had no name as it was unknown • It rejected any sort of treatment • The disease progressed in illness. • Later scientists discovered that aids, was linked to HIV. The origins of the disease
This is the most common theory. • First transfers of SIVcpz to humans came from killing and eating the animals or blood entering into cuts or wounds. • Regularly human bodies reject SIV • Some infections must have adapted differently to their bodies depending on his body, hence the different forms of HIV, supporting the hunting theory. The hunter theory
This theory is suggesting it was passed through medical experiments. • · In a book The River, journalist Edward suggests that HIV can be traced in a vaccine called chat of an oral polio. • · It was given to millions of people in late 1950s in the Belgian Congo, Ryanda and Urundi. • · Locals that had been infected by SIV in chimps may have had Chat reproducing in their kidney cells. • · People argue that OPV theory is unreliable because HIV was caught before any vaccine trials where ever carried out. The Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) theory
Travel • Travel was a serious factor in spreading the disease. • Gay men traveling • In Africa will have been spread along truck routes, in cities within the continent. • Not was it only conceived with its own contents but by travelers from foreign countries. • So the virus spreading is to complicated to blame on a group or someone. How the disease has spread globally?
The demand for equipment as medical industries developed increased greatly. • Hospitals and care centers were in need for blood, and paid for people to give their blood • More lower class people were drawn to this, so the blood become contaminated. • Doctors weren’t aware of how easily HIV could be transmitted • Blood was sent all over the world, and people who received contaminated blood soon showed the effects of HIV as well The Blood Industry
Transport Lines and connections • Access to prevention and treatment (no cure) • Population density • Poverty • Religion Main Geographic factors which influence the spread of aids:
A. Deaths: • Creates a huge number of deaths without nutrition and health care that undeveloped countries lack. • Deaths reduce the amount of people working and therefore the country’s capital The impacts that the disease has had on economies
B. Reductions in country’s capital: People who get the infection can’t work and need large amount of health care. Lots of people who get the infection are in their prime working age and therefore it drastically decreases the amount of economically active people. • Also people have to have time off work to care for sick relatives, which also reduces the amount of economically active people.
C. HighDependency ratio: Non economically active x 100)/ Economically active • AIDS mainly affects young adults. By large percentages of young people dying it creates a lower taxable population. This means that there is a high dependency ratio. • A high dependency ratio results in countries being unable to build new facilities such as schools and medical facilities and therefore resulting in a slow growth of the economy.
D. High percentage of orphans: AIDS creates a lot of orphans. Young orphaned children need money as they are not working and therefore a lot of money is going out and little is coming back in. • The graph below was created in 2001. It shows that in 2001 there were 600,000 AIDS orphans in Zimbabwe out of a total population of 11,365, 366 which is 5% of the total population. The projections for 2005 show that the percentage of AIDS orphans was still increasing.
“The vast majority of AIDS cases, over 90% are from the developing world. Two thirds of the world’s infections have occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa.”
A. Changes the role of the child: • Older children in a family have to take on more responsibility doing things such as looking after younger siblings or sick parents. The impacts that the disease has had on societies (Social Impacts)
B. Affects children’s education: • Schools may experience losses in staff and resources as adult staff dies from the result of AIDS. Eg. In Zambia, 30% of teachers are HIV positive. • Children also have to stop going to school to attend to parents or younger siblings or to work to earn money for the family.
C. Exclusion: • Many myths have been created about the HIV virus, such as, “it can be caught if you touch the same toilet seat as a person with AIDS”. Myths such as these mean that people are excluded from society. • Exclusion has also meant that people don’t openly talk about AIDS for fear of being rejected, excluded or being told you are a bigot.
D. Strain on Health care: • As the HIV prevalence of a country rises, the strain placed on its hospitals is likely to increase. In sub-Saharan Africa, people with HIV-related diseases occupy more than half of all hospital beds. • HIV-positive patients stay in hospital four times longer than other patients. • Hospitals are struggling to cope, especially in poorer African countries where there are often too few beds available. This shortage results in people being admitted only in the later stages of illness, reducing their chances of recovery.
While HIV and AIDS is causing an increased demand for health services, large numbers of healthcare professionals are being directly affected by the epidemic. • Botswana for example, lost 17% of its healthcare workforce due to AIDS between 1999 and 2005
E. Basic Necessity: • A study in South Africa found that poor households coping with members who are sick from HIV or AIDS were reducing spending on necessities even further. The most likely expenses to be cut were clothing (21%), electricity (16%) and other services (9%). Falling incomes forced about 6% of households to reduce the amount they spent on food and almost half of households reported having insufficient food at times
F. Food production • The HIV and AIDS epidemic adds to food insecurity in many areas, as agricultural work is neglected or abandoned due to household illness • it was calculated in 2006 that by 2020, Malawi’s agricultural workforce will be 14% smaller than it would have been without HIV and AIDS. In other countries, such as Mozambique, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe, the reduction is likely to be over 20%
This graph shows the population of Namibia in 2004, people with and without AIDS. • The largest age group of people with AIDS is the 0-5 group, this is because the second highest age group with AIDS is the 15-25 group who are having children, in this country, most families have more than one child, which increases the number of children born with the disease, and then grow up to pass it on to their children. • The reason for the 15-25 group being so large is because this is the time that people are more sexually active, and will be around the time that people are looking to have children. • The top group, 65-80+ are the age group with the least number of people with the disease, this is because in an LEDC such as Namibia, people don’t tend to live up until they are 70, this is mainly because the number of people with AIDS is so high, that some people won’t reach this age, because they would have died young from the virus that they have caught. • The number of children without AIDS in the 0-5 age group is larger than the other age groups. The age group 10-15, people without AIDS, is so small that it is barely visible on the graph; this is because the people in this group are not yet sexually active until they are over 15. • The difference between males and females is insufficient to be analysed, however there does seem to be a very small difference between the men and the women in that there are more woman then men. There doesn’t seem to be any logical reason for this.
