Perspective

Doing the interviews for the question of the week was very interesting for me.  I liked getting the opportunity to see what others thought's were towards HIV/AIDS.  I asked a lot of people that I have known for quite some time, and it was odd that we had never talked about it.  Usually, you talk about things that are having an affect on the world population or even the national.  Everybody talks about an event if important people are involved in some kind of accident or assassination; however, there is a disease that is running rampant through every country in the world, killing millions, and orphaning millinos more.  I just find it very puzzling that the topic has never really come up before.  It might be that I have never been personally affected by it nor have my loved ones.  I do not think that is a very good excuse though.  I want to be concerned with things that are affecting millions of people, I do not want to wait until it personally affects my life.  In the past I have been to Haiti and since then I have been very concerned with poverty.  I have done various things to try and help people that are living in such terrible conditions.  I want to have that kind of concern for people that are living with HIV/AIDS because they definitely have a lower quality of life. I mean that in a physical sense, I do not doubt that there are people afflicted with HIV/AIDS that are much happier than people that are physically sound. 

http://www.helpforhiv.com/

I thought this was an awesome website.

Did You Know?

This week I have decided to take a look at HIV/AIDS in Malawi.  This country interests me because I had two friends that did an internship over the summer.  Out of 14 million people in Malawi, there are 1 million people living with HIV/AIDS (AVERT, 2011).  "AIDS is the leading cause of death among adults in Malawi, and is the major factor in the countries low life expectancy of just 43 years." (AVERT, 2011)  That is awful.  "Between 1985 and 1993, HIV prevalence amongst women tested at urban antenatal clinics increased from 2% to 30%." (AVERT, 2011) That is a huge increase in such a short amount of time, luckily it has decreased to 17% (AVERT, 2011).  HIV/AID is more common in women than men, 60% of the affected population being women (AVERT, 2011).  "In 2009 an estimated 120,000 children in Malawi were living with HIV, and more than half a million children had been orphaned by HIV/AIDS." (AVERT, 2011)  Last week I looked at Kenya and there was a similar trend among women.  More women were affected by HIV/AIDS than men.  I assume this is because of prostitution.  It is extremely sad to see how many children are affected by this disease.  It is overwhelming.

Bibliography:

AVERT. (2011). HIV & AIDS in malawi. Retrieved February 9, 2011, from http://www.avert.org/aids-malawi.htm