The AIDS Epidemic: The Price of Death.

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Caroline Perez

4/22/02

World History

The AIDS Epidemic: The Price of Death

        In 1981 a new and dangerous disease began to spread throughout the world.  This sexually transmitted disease would later become known as AIDS.  AIDS is an acronym for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, a disease caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).  This virus attacks and weakens the immune system, which makes the body susceptible to infections and diseases.  AIDS can affect anyone who has had sex with an infected individual (vaginal, oral, and anal) or shared contaminated needles, syringes, or blood products.  It can pass to an unborn child by means of breast-feeding.  The diseases a person might contract from the weakened immune system are called opportunistic infections because they take advantage of the body’s damaged line of defense.  Most researchers believe that the virus began in Africa, where most AIDS cases currently exist.  While there are drugs on the market aimed at suppressing the disease, these drugs are manufactured and sold at exceedingly high prices, and most Africans cannot afford to pay for the treatments.  It is because of this that 28.1 million Africans now live with the HIV virus, making the epidemic in Africa one of the worst to have in human history (UNAIDS/WHO “AIDS Epidemic Update…).  Nelson Mandela, a widely known AIDS awareness supporter once stated, “AIDS kills those on whom society relies on to grow crops, work in the mines and factories, run the schools and hospitals, and govern the countries.  It creates new pockets of poverty when parents and breadwinners die and children leave school to support the remaining children” (The Foundation for Democracy in Africa.  “Economic Effects.”). High costs for AIDS drugs have been the cause for major effects on the economy, frequent mother to child transmission of the virus, and slumping effects on education in Africa.

        As mentioned before, there are a few AIDS drugs on the market aimed at suppressing AIDS.  Even so, there is no vaccine, no cure, and only limited and expensive means of temporarily negating its effects and making life for the sufferer more tolerable.  There are two major classes of drugs that prevent the disease from multiplying, reverse transcriptase inhibitors (RT) and protease inhibitors.  Reverse transcriptase inhibitors interfere with an enzyme essential to the production of a new virus, significantly slowing the onslaught of the disease.  Protease inhibitors, on the other hand, attack the virus in the later stages of its development.  Usually these two kinds of drugs are mixed to form “cocktails.”  Scientists are currently working on two classes of vaccines for HIV: a therapeutic vaccine and a preventive vaccine.  The addition of these two vaccines would contribute to slowing the spread of the virus.  However, immense research must still be done because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must approve the vaccines before they are allowed on the market.  The FDA approved the first RT inhibitors in 1987.  Eight years later, in 1995, the first protease inhibitors were released on the market.  While these drugs have helped notably in containing the AIDS virus worldwide, there is still an obvious need for even more drugs, as different strains of the virus arise.  

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        The drugs aimed at suppressing the AIDS disease are sold at overly high prices.  The cost of treatment and care for those Africans infected with AIDS would be approximately $1.5 billion a year.  Even though there is public pressure to lower drug prices, UN-sponsored discussions with pharmaceutical corporations, and competition from generic drug manufacturers, have helped drive antiretroviral drug prices down, the price for AIDS treatment is $10,000 a year per family (Finkel, David).  This may be why only one percent of the AIDS drugs sold worldwide are sold in sub-Saharan Africa despite the percentage of AIDS infected people.  Despite ...

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