HIV/AIDS in United States Issue 2022

Running Head: HIV/AIDS 1
HIV/AIDS in United States
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HIV/AIDS 2
HIV/AIDS is a disease that attacks and damages body cells which aid in fighting
infection, hence making the affected person to be more vulnerable to other diseases. There are
factors that increase the likelihood of someone getting infected with HIV/AIDS. The factors that
increase HIV/AIDS occurrence include having unsafe sex, uncircumcised man, having a
Sexually Transmitted Infection, use of intravenous drugs, having multiple sex partners and
sharing equipment like syringes and needles.
HIV/AIDS can be transmitted from one person to another through the contact of
particular body fluids from a HIV patient. These fluids include pre-seminal fluids, semen, rectal
fluids, breast milk, vaginal fluids, and blood. In United States (US), HIV is mainly spread by
having vaginal or anal sex with a HIV patient without using condoms or taking medicines to treat
or prevent HIV, sharing equipment that are used in injecting drugs such as syringes and needles
with someone infected with HIV and from an infected mother to her child during childbirth,
pregnancy and breastfeeding (Van Handel et al, 2016).
By the year 2016, United States estimated that a population of 1.1 million persons who
aged 13 years and above had HIV/AIDS illness that includes an estimate of 162500 or 15% of
people whose infection had not been diagnosed. In 2017 a total of 38739 people were newly
diagnosed with HIV in US and 6 dependent areas (Linley et al, 2018).
As of 2016, US has recorded about 675000 deaths from HIV/AIDS ever since the onset
of the HIV epidemic. But due to improved prophylaxis and treatments against opportunistic
infections arising from the infection of HIV, deaths rates from HIV have quite significantly
reduced (Hall et al, 2017).