Wake Up World...there's a phone call you need to answer

Well the semester is ending and as I look back I think about the fact that this was a hard semester for me. I signed up for classes that have nothing to do with my major because all the other classes were filled. So that set me back a little in graduating. I got into an accident and tore the hamstring in my leg so for about two weeks all I could do was hobble around everywhere. When I was going to the women's panel I got into a wreck and messed up my pelvis my shoulder and the same leg I already had a torn hamstring on. I went to the health clinic and got a prescription for a muscle relaxant...apparently my body doesn't like muscle relaxants and my legs swelled up so badly that I could barely get out of bed. I was out of school for two weeks. As I was thinking about everything that happened this semester on top of me being new to Orlando I think about how much harder it would be for someone with HIV to go through all of that.

Having to worry about after the wreck the medication you want to take because your bodies in pain, but then having to make sure they don't conflict with the medication you're already taking, and then instead of just having their legs swell they could have a blood clot develop, heart failure, and many other things. It makes me thankful for my little amount of swelling.

This class has made me wonder more than any other class about people and what the underlying stories could be. For the world clock to say that there are now 34,499,083 people living with HIV and probably half of them dont even know it, is scary. It makes me want to tell everyone I meet to go get tested and everyone I've met so far I've asked them if they've been tested and if they say no I ask why not? Most of them say because they have no need and I usually bug them until they say they will get tested. I just think there's a wake up call that the world needs to get about this disease that it just hasn't received yet....and we need to hurry up and answer the phone.

Did You Know....AIDS in Africa

At the end of 2007 there were over 2 million children living with HIV. 2 million people died of AIDS in 2007. Of those 2 million one in every 7 were children. Every hour, 31 children die of AIDS.

Africa already had a high infant death rate, but over the years the death toll started to decrease, when AIDS spread throughout Africa it sent the infant death rate back to an increase. The transmission rate from mother to child has been almost eliminated in high income areas because of their ability to get the antiretrovirals needed. This is not the case for those in Africa in low income areas who are barely getting the medication needed for themselves.

9 out of 10 of the children living with HIV are in Sub-Saharan Africa. Mother to child transmission isn't the only way that children are getting HIV. There is a myth that was circulating in Africa that the way to cure HIV was to have sex with a virgin, which led to multiple rapes of young African girls by HIV-positive men. Also teenagers are having sex at a younger and younger age. 15% of those surveyed reported having sex at 15 and younger.

Lack of proper healthcare and the unwillingness to educate people in low-income areas about the risks and how HIV is transmitted, to me are the biggest reasons why so many people are getting HIV and we can change that if we just take the time to educate everyone on something that can happen to and affect anyone.

Did You Know....HIV and the unborn baby

So for some unknown reason, avert.org does not want to work for me today. Every time I go on the website it tells me that safari cannot find the server. So today I went to about.com for a more in depth look into HIV and newborn babies. As a recap HIV can be spread to a fetus one of three ways:

Sharing a blood supply: which is when the mother's blood circulates within the fetus and the baby is infected that way.

Infection during delivery: which is why most HIV positive women have a C-section.

Breastfeeding: for this reason women are asked not to breastfeed if they have another choice.

The risk of passing HIV to an unborn child with proper prenatal care and the use of proper antiretrovirals can be reduced to as low as 2%.

Did You Know....Process of Screening newborns

So I was just perusing the internet trying to see what else I could learn about HIV transmission from mothers to their newborns when I realized.... I know how transmission occurs and what happens once they're diagnosed with HIV, but I don't know how they determine whether a newborn has HIV or not.

According to the National Academies Press, article HIV screening of pregnant women and newborns, screening newborn babies can provide for earlier treatment if detected that young, it prevents horizontal transmission (from the baby to the nurse) and other things. Which got me on the subject of horizontal transmission.

There are two types of horizontal transmission. The first type is anterior station, which is when something is transmitted by a bite. Then there is the posterior station, which is when someone is infected by coming into contact with infected feces.

Law & Order along with the pregnancy game

So while I'm looking around Avert.org's webpage I stumble upon the games section.

There's this thing called the pregnancy game where you get asked questions about pregnancy and learn more about it as you score higher.

http://www.avert.org/pregnancy-game.htm

You start off with 5 lives on Level 1.

So what I learned is that sperm can live for several days in the body, but for only 24 hours outside of the body. Also, many women suffer from acne while they are pregnant.

I love the show Law & Order: SVU. There was an episode where a mother had 2 children who both turned out to be HIV positive. The whole time she was pregnant she didn't use any antiretrovirals because a doctor that she went to told her there was no evidence that HIV lead to AIDS so she had nothing to worry about. As a result she died because she felt no need to take medications to control her HIV. A question that was posed that I'm still wondering about is, is the doctor truly at fault when it is posted everyone that it is a widely-known belief that HIV causes AIDS. The doctor gave his professional opinion but it was up to her to choose to take the word of one doctor opposed to hundreds of doctors that believe the opposite.

Did You Know....

I walk around every day and see so many different pregnant women and find myself wondering does she have HIV?...How about this one? or that one?

Am I odd for doing this? I don't think I am but then again I have a bit of a biased opinion.

According to avert.org the CDC let out a statement saying that at the end of 2007 571,378 people were reported for having HIV. You still have to think about the people who have not even been tested for the disease. Also one in every five estimated people who have HIV have not even been diagnosed with that disease.

How many women are walking around with this disease and don't know they could be passing it on to their child simply because they haven't been tested for it.

In 2002 there were only two states that required women be tested for HIV once they discovered they were pregnant and that was New York and Conneticut.

Today, in the US and the UK there is an opt out where a woman is automatically tested unless she specifically states that she doesn't want the test.

Did You Know....

I always wondered how would women who are HIV positive try and have their children. I guess I just figured that they'd always be with someone who like them was HIV positive too. It never processed in my mind that there are people who are HIV positive and are with HIV negative people. When that's the case doctors use artificial insemination, which is when a man's sperm is placed inside a woman's uterus.

If the man is the one who is HIV positive then the only way that they can have a child is by sperm washing. Which is where they take the sperm and separate the sperm from the seminal fluid before doing in vitro. It's a very effective procedure but it's only offered at select clinics and can be very hard to get done.

Me, personally I would be scared to try and have a child if I was HIV positive. Even though there are ways to lower the chance of your child contracting the disease anything above .000% is still too much of a percent to me.

All information was gathered from Avert.org under the tab transmission and testing.