The Infection And Prevalence Of Hiv Among Adults And...

The Infection and Prevalence of HIV among Adults and Adolescents in the United States Kuljit Kaur Sidhu I.D. #16822472 Summer Session I 2015 Professor Jaime Allgood I. The Public Health Problem The United States is facing a flourishing epidemic of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infections which is rapidly progressing and contributing to the rising mortality rates. HIV is an infection that is caused when a virus attacks the immune system which is the body’s natural defense system and without a strong immune system, an individual’s body is too weak to fight off infections. The strongest component of the immune system to fight off infectious diseases is white blood cells. HIV infects and destroys†¦show more content†¦Individuals with HIV may not notice and/or realize their symptoms because they may not appear for up to 10 years (CDC, 2013). The symptoms include rapid weight loss, recurring fever and/or profuse night sweats, extreme and unexplained tiredness, prolonged swelling of the lymph glands in the armpits, groin, or neck, and/or diarrhea that lasts for more than a week. Within the United States, over 1.2 million people are living with HIV infection and about 13% of them are unaware of their infection. Additionally, it is estimated that 50,000 new HIV infections are developing each year (CDC,2013). In the year 2013, about 47,352 people were newly diagnosed with HIV infections and overall 1,194,039 have been diagnosed with AIDS (CDC, 2013). Unfortunately in the year 2012, about 13,712 people with AIDS and about 670,000 people in the United States have died overall because they were unaware of their infection which caused them to develop AIDS, the untreatable disease (CDC, 2012). In regards to a concentrated population, adolescents/adults (age 13 years and over), carry the highest risk for HIV infections (Campsmith,2010) . In the year 2006, about 1,106,400 adolescents/adults were diagnosed and living with HIV in the United States and about 232,700 individuals who were unaware of their infection and went undiagnosed