DW News published this video item, entitled “How the coronavirus shifts focus away from other deadly diseases | Covid-19 Special” – below is their description.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, this year world leaders from science, politics and business are meeting virtually. The coronavirus is straining the response to the many health crises which already exist. Tuberculosis is still the leading infectious disease. It infects around 10 million a year and kills about 1.5 million. African countries lag far behind the world in the fight against TB, and malaria kills half a million people annually, more than 90 percent of them in Africa. As well as these two, HIV/AIDS still hasn’t been conquered. And while all three diseases have decreased globally since 2000, they still pose a major threat. The pressure is on to fight these global health crises, even as we navigate our way through the current pandemic.
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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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