Big disease with a little name

That is what singer and composer Prince in his 1987 song Sign of the Times, dubbed Aids, an acronym for acquired immune deficiency syndrome. The syndrome became a worldwide scare in 1985 when heart-throb actor Rock Hudson admitted he had AIDS. He died a few months later, giving, as another blonde actress Morgan Fairchild aptly put it, “Aids a face”. The limelight became a meteor when Queen frontsman Freddie Mercury followed the same fate in November 1991 only a day after he publicly admitted he had the disease. His appearance in the rock group’s last album Innuendo said it all about the ravaging effects of the human immunodeficiency virus.

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and acquired immune deficiency sydrome (AIDS) are not the same thing. The first denotes that your organism is infected by the virus, the second is the term given to a group of unusual diseases, hence a syndrome, which someone infected with HIV is more prone to develop. Pneumocystis carinii, a lung infection caused by a protozoon, and Kaposi’s sarcoma, a tumor primarily of the skin and gastrointestinal tract are both as rare as a sunny day in London in the uninfected individual but both very common in infected people. In fact Kaposi’s sarcoma was one of the heralds of the syndrome when it started appearing with alarming regularity in homosexual men at the start of the 1980s.

According to UNAIDS statistics AIDS is now a pandemic. In 2007, an estimated 33.2 million people lived with the disease worldwide, and an estimated 2.1 million people died of its complications, including 330,000 children. Over three-quarters of these deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa. Even though most of us with ears full of the proverbial sand still firmly believe we do not have HIV infected individuals on our shores, we actully do. The latest data found on the World Health Organisation website shows that there were 65 cases of HIV at the time the data was collected (site was updated in June).

Contrary to popular belief not all infected individuals are homosexuals. Infection by the human deficiency virus spans all generations, social class and sexual orientation. It is a sexually transmitted disease so anyone enjoying sex or otherwise can acquire it.Obviously, the more sexual partners one has the greater the risk.

The virus can also be transmitted any time there is exchange of body fluids between an infected and an uninfected person as when there is blood exchange through transfusion, which has now been drastically reduced through screening, or needle sharing and from mother to child through the placenta, during birth via contact with the secretions of the birth canal or after birth through breast feeding. Though minute levels of the virus have been found in the saliva, tears and sweat of infected individuals there is no evidence of infection via these body fluids. The human immunodeficiency virus is however not transmitted if the infected individual touches us, breathes or sneezes in our proximity or looks in our direction; thus the frequent quarantine rituals we tend to exercise in these circumstances are, more often than not, unnecessary.

What is particular about HIV is that it attacks the very cells that the body possesses to protect it from disease. In an uninfected individual, invasion by any foreign organism, usually a bacterium or a virus, is counteracted by the sophisticated and highly efficient cell and antibody battery of the immune system. Once the human immunodeficiency virus gets into the human body, it invades and takes over these very cells creating a state of coup d'état in the immune system. The infected individual is rendered defenceless in the face of a multitude of invading organisms, both from the inside and the outside and vulnerable to a variety of diseases, even the most uncommon ones. Having no immune system to counteract them, these diseases are usually more aggressive and more unresponsive to treatment.

Once infected, an individual is a carrier for the disease and has a high probability of infecting anyone whose body fluids come in contact with his. Some individuals go on to develop the full blown acquired immune deficiency sydrome or the AIDS-related complex, which is a less severe form of the disease, others persist in the carrier state for a number of years then develop the syndrome, while a minority persist in the carrier state and die of other causes.

For those who go on to develop the full blown syndrome it is simply a nightmare with the same recurrence as the infinite episodes of the soap opera Beautiful. The infected individual is like a lone, unarmed gladiator in an arena teeming with all the possible variety of beasts of prey, prone to all possible infections and cancers that are unheard of or very rare in the uninfected counterpart. In fact, some diseases like tuberculosis, have been on the rise since AIDS came into the picture. Considering the ravaging effects one type of cancer can have on a human being, it does not take much imagination to realise the type of suffering an AIDS patient goes through.

To date, there is no cure for HIV infection or AIDS, only expensive drug medication to control the severity of the disease, so the importance of education and prevention cannot be underestimated. Despite the staunch religious beliefs most of us have we still have to accept that promiscuity and drug abuse especially among our youngsters is a reality, and preaching monogamy and righteousness is definitely not enough. Education about the reality of HIV infection and transmission, and about all the other sexually transmitted diseases at that, is of paramount importance as is the awareness of the preventive measures available. World AIDS day, to be celebrated on Monday, is primarily geared for this purpose. Burying one’s head in the sand in the face of predators is, after all, an alleged defence mechanism of ostriches, not of humans.

Source: Weekender, November 29, 2008