Human Immunodeficiency Virus ( Hiv ) - 1216 Words

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a virus that alters the immune system, making the population with HIV vulnerable to infections and diseases. HIV can be found in the body fluids of an infected person. The virus is passed from one person to another through blood-to-blood and sexual contact. HIV can be transmitted in many ways, such as vaginal, oral sex, anal sex, blood transfusion, and contaminated needles. Patients with HIV cannot clear to virus out of their bodies like most other viruses do. Once a patient is diagnosed with HIV, he will have it for life. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2015), HIV can stay in the body for a long time and attack ones T-cells or CD4 cells, which are the cells that are needed†¦show more content†¦Due to the growing spread of this disease, steps should be taken to prevent contracting the virus. Steps such as abstinence, selecting partners with low previous sexual partners, use of condoms, and receiving education about the topic. Education is very important, there were about 1.2 million people in the United States were living with HIV at the end of 2011, the most recent year this information was available. Of those people, about 12.8% do not know they are infected (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015) Goldman, Juday, Seekins, Linthicum, Romley, (2014) state that in recent years, guidelines for HIV treatment have recommended initiation of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) earlier in the course of the disease than was previously noted. They used an epidemiological model of this disease transmission and progression to assess HIV prevention through early initiation of cART. It was estimated that the actual timing of treatment initiation in the United States prevented 188,000 AIDS cases that would have lead to HIV cases in the period 1996-2009. Very early treatment (at CD4 counts greater than 500) accounted for four-fifths of the prevented cases. For all of the prevented cas es, the losses in life expectancy that were avoided were worth $128 billion, assuming that a life-year has a value of $150,000. These findings underscore the cost-effectiveness of early HIV