DW News published this video item, entitled “How coronavirus disrupted the fight against HIV/Aids | COVID-19 Special” – below is their description.
World AIDS Day this year finds us deep in the throes of another pandemic – COVID-19. The highly infectious novel coronavirus has swept across the world, devastating health systems and laying waste to economies as governments introduce drastic measures to contain the spread. Not since the HIV/AIDS pandemic of the 1990s have countries faced such a common health threat. Around 33 Mmillion people worldwide have died from AIDS-related illnesses in the last 40 years.
It’s taken incredible expertise, collaboration and dedication from all levels of society to track, understand, treat and prevent the illness. Although HIV/Aids hasn’t been eradicated, the global response is in many respects a shining example of what can be achieved when countries and people work together.
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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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