AIDS in Africa

The number of people living with Human Immune-Deficiency Virus (HIV) in Africa especially in Sub-Saharan part is quite big. More than half of the population is infected with HIV AIDS and the number of individuals being infected increases each day.

It usually causes high death rates in children and adults. According to statistics, the number of those who are infected is quite high which is about 2.3 million adults and children (UNAIDS, 2006). The number seems to be dropping drastically which portrays that there has been a change of behaviour which has made the number to reduce and also the decrease can be as a result of increased mortality rate of those who are infected.

The number of people who are most affected by AIDS are prostitutes and their clients homosexuals and most of individuals who inject themselves with drugs. In Sub-Saharan region HIV transmission is mostly experienced in most of heterosexual transmission in Africa most of the women are infected at early stages which increases the gap between men and women who are infected with HIV.
In Africa, South Africa is the country which has the highest prevalence rate of individual who are infected with AIDS.
According to epidemiological survey, it shows that the number of infected individuals in this country does not decrease and the main factors which have lead to this increase includes social instability, poverty, family disruption migratory labor system which leads to increased morbidity, sexual transmitted diseases are in increased levels in these regions, women lives in low status and sexual violence.
The increased incidence rate of Aids in Africa has lead to a major economical problem which has made the country’s economy in most of Sub-Saharan countries to drop drastically and people in these regions to live under a lot of poverty.
According to various statistics, most of the Sub-Saharan Africa countries drop economically with around 1-2% of the total economic status of the country annually. Most of the families with individuals who are infected with HIV AIDS live in total poverty than the rest of the household.
This is because the level of productivity decreases drastically since individuals infected with HIV become weak and they are unable to carry on with their daily routine work.
These individuals in most cases who are young eventually die leaving young children and the aged who are not able to work for their basic need. They are therefore left to depend on well wishers, government and other non governmental organizations for their living.
Due to high death rates, it has also lead to great food shortage since those who work in farms are usually the young generation which is the group which is highly infected. This has lead to lack of essential labor which is needed in farm and therefore the family can result to use of finances which were not necessary to purchase food.
In some Sub-Saharan countries such as South Africa, most of productive individuals such as those who work in various governmental organizations are dying of AIDS at a very high rate which makes the country to lost important people who are skilled and had a high potential of bringing revenue to the government.
These usually pose a major drawback of the economic status of the country. When these individuals die, vital services are not delivered to the public and this can lead to loss of revenue that government could gain from these services.
The main sector which is mainly affected by the high prevalence rate of HIV is the labor sector. This is because most of the individuals who are affected by AIDS are between the age of 15-49 which is the most productive age which is mainly the working age.
When the labor of the country drops, its economic status is also affected this is mostly experienced by those individuals who are directly affected or infected by AIDS.
When those people who are already trained for various job die because of AIDS, it means that factories, industries, schools and hospitals have to incur extra cost for training more skilled individuals who can replace them and those who can work efficiently (Cohen 1990). In order to facilitate this, these sectors have to use a lot of money which could be used for other purposes to boost the economic status of these sectors.
Due to strong impact that HIV sets on labor force, in various enterprises and household, HIV has acted as a quite significant factor in drop of the economic development and growth of countries and also in individuals. It has played quite a vital effect in the economic development of Africa as a whole.
Due to the fact that Africa faces a major economic drawback, it has made it quite difficulty for African countries to fight the epidemic. This is because the disease prevalence rate is quite high and the economic status of he country and individuals goes down which makes most of individuals not to afford the antiretroviral drugs (ARV) therapies which can help to reduce the prevalence rate of diseases.
In some cases the productivity of infected individuals can be boosted by proper feeding and good diet, but in these Sub-Saharan countries, its quite hard for infected individual to have proper diet which will help in boosting the immune status of the body since there is no enough money to be supplemented in buying of food.
Due to high poverty levels of those who are infected and their low economic status, the prevention methods which can be used to minimize high rate of disease infection are not quite applicable due to lack of money. This has increased the disease occurrence a lot since no prevention measures are taken and therefore transmission rate is quite high.
This is mostly experienced in mother child transmission, since most of expectant women who are living in extreme poverty do not have money to attend the antenatal clinic and they usually end up delivering at home where there are no measures which are taken into consideration to prevent the disease from being transmitted to the child.
In some cases, individuals who are infected with HIV also have high chances of being infected with other opportunistic infections which mainly affects individuals with AIDS such as TB. Due to their inability to access medical services due to lack of money, they get weak quite quickly and can result to death. In this case the economic status of the country drop due to lack of money.
Most of the countries in Sub Saharan live under extreme poverty which makes them to lack basic access to education which is a major factor which can be used to alleviate poverty levels and boost the economic status of the country (Avert org, 2008). Those individuals who do not have basic education on the effect AIDS end up contacting it carelessly which increases transmission rate due to lack of knowledge about the impact the disease has on the society.
Social impact of children and women in South Africa
South Africa is one of the countries in the Sub-Saharan region with quite a high prevalence rate of AIDS its estimated that around 15-20% of its total adult population is infected with HIV. The number of those individuals who are infected has greatly exceeded the number which was considered to be possible initially.
There is no evidence of epidemic slowing in South Africa since around 4.9-6.1 million people in the country are infected with AIDS. Statistics carried out on 2004 showed that around 1-3 expectant mother are infected with HIV and since then gradual increase has been realized.