Effect on Individual and Society (Role of Public Health)AIDS/HIV has a huge impact on society because society is the host and transmitter of the disease. In order to prevent the fast spreading HIV virus, there would have to be drastic changes in peoples? sexual behaviour. (Folks & Butera, AIDS) Since this is not possible, we have to explore different methods of prevention.
The knowledge that an epidemic like AIDS exists causes a lot of people to be careful. More people are using condoms these days and people are more careful than before with sharing needles but this just isn?t enough. Society needs to understand that this is big! They need to know that only they can stop the spreading of this disease. This is where anti-aids organizations and Public Health play an important role.Public health objectives, with regard to AIDS, are to slow the spreading of HIV, make people aware of the disease and to help infected people.
The main source of funding for public health is through the government, which usually runs the organization. In the case with AIDS, public health makes people aware of the disease by holding many campaigns, especially trying to attract teenagers to promote condom use. They also put out public service announcements aimed at adults and, again, teenagers to keep them well educated about the silent killers at this present time. Public health also helps AIDS/HIV victims with all sorts of problems from helping them cope to financial. Not only does this government organization help society, it also works with companies to help find a cure.
The impact AIDS/HIV has on people is phenomenal. It causes people to be more careful about who they?re sexual partners are and also causes people to wake up and see that there isn?t complete sexual bliss. Knowing that AIDS exists could keep a lot of men from seeing prostitutes. This could have a chain reaction, which will lead to no hookers on the streets, but we all know that there would have to be jobs for this to happen and in third world countries, this is not possible.
Furthermore, the knowledge of the existence of HIV motivates people to be cleaner. It forces people to keep toilets and kitchens clean. Outbreaks of all the diseases over the century have changed the attitudes of people towards cleanliness, especially in third world countries.
All we, as a society, can hope for now is that the government, commercial companies and health departments will come up with a cure for it soon or the epidemic of the decade will cause major human destruction all over the world.
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Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Alan E. Nourse M.D., Franklin Watts publishing, 1992
History of AIDS, Mirko D. Gremk, Princeton University Press, Princeton New Jersey, 1990
The Gift of Death, Andre Picard, HarperCollins Publishing, Toronto Ontario, 1995
Infectious AIDS Have We Been Misled? Peter H. Duesberg, North Atlantic Books, Berkley California,1995
http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu. University of California, San Francisco AIDS Program
UN AIDS global report 1998. UN AIDS Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS
AIDS epidemic update: December 1998. UN AIDS Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS
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AIDS, Folks, Thomas and Butera, Salvatore, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 1997
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