HIV Spread patterns

What type of sexual practice in Africa increases the chance that HIV will be passed on to a man/woman having sex with an HIV+ partner?

"Dry sex", where a woman dries out her vagina before sex. This leads to increased friction during sex, and thus more vaginal bleeding. This increases the chance that the HIV-infected blood will get into the partner's system and infect them.

How does HIV/AIDS affect Micro, Meso, and Macroeconomics?

A person falls sick with AIDS. They have to miss work, and perhaps even quit the job. This leads to shifting income to meet expenses put on them by the need to buy ARVs, or just not being able to afford ARVs and dying. If the patient has the money to afford ARVs, they will most likely still have little to no money for other expenses, leading to strain on the family unit's finances. Children are also pulled out of school to start working and help support the family, so they miss out on education and have limited economic opportunities later on. This is the effect on Microeconomics. Mesoeconomics is affected by having a significant amount of a company's workforce fall sick with AIDS and have to quit or do less work. The company makes less money and struggles to stay in business. Macroeconomics is affected when a lot of companies start producing less money or go out of business due to their workforce being decimated by AIDS. When this happens, the government is not able to collect as much in taxes from the companies, and so the buying power of the government and the GDP go down.

What is a major consequence of having so many young parents die due to AIDS?

An orphan crisis. Many children are helpless when their mothers and fathers die, because then their only safety net is aunts and uncles who have usually also died of AIDS. This leaves frail grandparents to help the children, but sometimes they are also dead and they are usually in need of care themselves, so they aren't of much help the the children.

What parts of the world have the fastest growing rate of HIV infection?

Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

How does AIDS affect agriculture?

Families with a person afflicted with HIV reap and sow less crops due to the family member being sick. This leads the family itself to have less food, and it contributes to the food insecurity of the nation when this phenomenon happens en mass. Food Insecurity also means that HIV patients have less food to eat, making them weaker/unable to keep down their ARVs, thus contributing to the speed at which their symptoms progress.

What is the leading cause of death and disease amongst women of reproductive age?

HIV.

What, besides continued funding, is being implemented in AIDS programs now that may be helping the programs?

Human Rights efforts.

How is HIV/AIDS multisectoral?

It affects micro, meso, and macroeconomics. It affects a nation's health care system. It affects education and even agriculture/food security.

How does HIV/AIDS affect the Health sector?

It overtaxes the already burdened healthcare systems of nations that have non-robust healthcare systems. Usually it is government healthcare that must help these patients, but it is still an overwhelming amount of patients for the system to handle. Healthcare workers are also put at high risk for contracting HIV, so many healthcare workers also die from AIDS, leaving even less healthcare workers to care for AIDS and other patients.

With ART treatment, is incidence of mother-to-child AIDS transmission going up or down.

It's going way down.

What is another problem women face that makes them more vulnerable to contracting HIV? Why is this?

Lack of education. It makes them even less able to get a job and support themselves, it makes them unable to fully understand HIV/AIDS and how to prevent it, it makes them less likely to insist on safe sex (condom usage), it makes them more likely to believe that there is no way to prevent HIV infection.

What is a major cultural problem when it comes to the inequalities between men and women and sexual practices?

Men dictate everything about sex, so women cannot insist on condom use to either keep from infecting their husband/boyfriend, or keep their husband/boyfriend from infecting them. Also, since Africa has many developing nations, whose economies require men to migrate to cities for jobs, many men use prostitutes in these cities or have casual sex with other women. This alone contributes to AIDS prevalence, but they also have sex with their wives later and may infect them if their wives aren't already infected.

In many countries, when a woman's partner dies, what can happen to her?

She may lose property, money, her livelihood, may be stuck raising children alone when she was already the primary caregiver. These factors may force her into marriages/relationships/prostitution she doesn't want to be in, but will increase the chance she will contract HIV.

How does AIDS affect education?

Students are pulled out of schools to work and make money to take care of their sick family member(s). Teachers become sick and miss a lot of school, so students are not as well instructed. Teachers die, so there are few experienced teachers, and again, students are less well instructed.

What part of the world has the highest number of HIV positive people?

Sub-Saharan Africa.