Blog #7 - Women's Infected Panel

I just left the Women's Infected Panel, and I have to say that it was very interesting.  Three of the women there had contracted HIV from monogamous relationships and the other from a needle stick.  It reinforced the idea that HIV/AIDS is not limited to any one gender or orientation.  It truly is a disease that does not differentiate between people that it infects.  One aspect that stuck with me was that one of the woman said that the stigma associated with HIV has not diminished one bit.  She claimed that it is as powerful and prevalent as it has always been.  It is very sad that the stigma is still so powerful when there is so much knowledge about the disease.  It was to be expected that humans would result to discrimination when HIV was an unknown killer, but now that we know how it is transmitted I think that the stigma should not be as bad.  This idea was reinforced by one other woman describing how her dermatologist refused to touch her at all.  I thought that it was very sad that some medical professionals were ignorant enough to treat their patients like that.  I feel that out of anyone they should be the most aware of how transmission occurs and that it would be perfectly safe to touch her skin.  The last thing that was very shocking was the cost of the medication.  The women said that it was anywhere from $1,500 to $2.500 per month! That is like having to pay the mortgage on a second house.

Despite the conditions described above, it was very encouraging because the women were very positive.  They said that there family had been extremely supportive of them, and had helped them get through a lot of it.  They were very optimistic about the whole ordeal, and were still enjoying their life, taking it a day at a time.  Also, it appeared that the antiretroviral drugs were very helpful.  I think they were a living testament of how important it is that everyone receive the drugs.  I am excited to see the differences between the Men and Women's Infected Panel.

"Did You Know"
 This week I have decided to shift my focus from Sub-Saharan Africa to Asia, specifically India.  There are approximately 2,400,000 people that are HIV positive, with a prevalence rate of 0.3% among adults age 15-49 (UNAIDS, 2009).  There are 2,300,000 adults 15 and up living with HIV, and out of that number 880,000 of them are women (UNAIDS, 2009).  Of the 2,300,000 people that are HIV positive only 123,000 people are receiving ARV drugs (UNAIDS, 2009).  Overall, there have been 170,000 people that have died from HIV (UNAIDS, 2009).  These statistics reveal that the situation in India is bad, to say the least.  UNAIDS did not even have an estimate of how many children have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS, which to me is a very bad sign.  It seems that in the media Africa gets a lot of the attention, but I feel like India could definitely use the assistance of the developed world.

I thought that this was a very powerful video depicting what HIV/AIDS looks like in the life of one person in India.

UNAIDS. (2009). India. Retrieved February 16, 2011, from http://www.unaids.org/en/regionscountries/countries/india/