DW News published this video item, entitled “HIV/AIDS 40 years on: How far has Africa come? | DW News” – below is their description.
It has been 40 years since the first case of AIDS was reported. Since then, nearly 35-million people have died from HIV-related disease.
While there is still no cure, there has been great progress in developing treatment. Today infected people only have to take one pill a day.
But HIV is still the leading cause of death for women of childbearing age in southern Africa, which has the world’s highest infection rate. In the Kayelitsha township in Cape Town, one health campaigner is working to make sure people stay on their medication.
DW News YouTube Channel
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In This Story: HIV
The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of Lentivirus (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive.
Without treatment, average survival time after infection with HIV is estimated to be 9 to 11 years, depending on the HIV subtype. In most cases, HIV is a sexually transmitted infection and occurs by contact with or transfer of blood, pre-ejaculate, semen, and vaginal fluids. Research has shown (for both same-sex and opposite-sex couples) that HIV is untransmittable through condomless sexual intercourse if the HIV-positive partner has a consistently undetectable viral load.
Non-sexual transmission can occur from an infected mother to her infant during pregnancy, during childbirth by exposure to her blood or vaginal fluid, and through breast milk. Within these bodily fluids, HIV is present as both free virus particles and virus within infected immune cells.
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