For many years, HIV/AIDS has continued to have a devastating effect on the economies of many countries and lives of many people. Poor health leads to poor economy and the high number of deaths globally, means that part of the working population is lost. Countries have suffered great labor shortage, a huge amount of finances have been used for the treatment of HIV/AIDS-related diseases and there has been reduced productivity. This paper compares the History of HIV/AIDS in China and the U.S.A.
Studies have shown that approximately 1.1 million people in the US live with HIV. However, there is promising policies and progress that have been made making HIV/AIDS a chronic and manageable condition. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2005), HIV/AIDS transmission until the year 1982 was believed to be Gay Related Immunodeficiency Disease (GRID). The homosexuals were believed to be the main source of HIV transmission in the US. Later, Intravenous drug users also increasingly contracted HIV by using used needles. After this, the view that HIV was a gay disease changed and was considered as a heterosexual disease hence there was the need for awareness creation.
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The government of US acknowledged the existence of HIV/AIDS quickly and immediately developed policies to address the epidemic. The US government has provided funding programs meant to create awareness of HIV/AIDS such as NIH and the CDC. There are various non-governmental organizations and government ministries that have been concerned with the creation of sexual education among the US citizens. The efforts were directed at giving the drug users unused needles. In the US, studies have shown that HIV/AIDS is not evenly distributed across all the states and regions. Studies have shown that individuals living with HIV diagnosis were very high in the Northeast, and the lowest was in the Midwest. Most of the HIV cases I the US is concentrated in the urban centers.
Focusing on the transmission pattern of HIV in the US, the following have been argued to be the major transmission forms: injection drug use, men who have sex with men (MSM) and even heterosexual. MSM in the US represents about 2% of the US population but have been the most affected with HIV. For instance, a study carried out on 2011, showed that 500,022 (57%) of people living with HIV in the US were either gay and bisexual or even gay and bisexual men injecting drugs.
China has made substantial progress towards tackling HIV/AIDS.HIV history in China has been steady, and this was associated with the national negligence that was a critical factor towards HIV spread in the year 1990s. There has been a greater national response towards HIV, and this has led to a drastic drop of the epidemic across China. In China, the epidemic is also unevenly distributed in various regions and provinces. Highest rates have been witnessed in Sichuan, Henan, Hunan, Beijing and Guangdong, Xinjiang, and they represent 84.3% of all the national rates. Transmission of HIV in China was high among the IDUs and the former plasma donors. Currently, heterosexual have become the most dominant route in the HIV transmission. In China, HIV epidemic is characterized by low level of national prevalence. Certain regions have been associated with high and severe HIV prevalence.
In the recent period, the total number of Chinese citizens living with HIV/AIDS and receiving treatment has been rising steadily throughout the nation (Yang et al., 2005). However, it is clear that the policies and progress targeted at reducing mother to child transmission (MTCT) rate have been very slow further the progress of addressing the high levels of stigma and discrimination individuals with HIV has also been very slow. In the recent times, China has been able to make certain substantial progress focusing on funding their HIV response. Approximately 88% of these funding is derived from the domestic sources. This has been reported to be encouraging taking into consideration longevity and sustainability of various HIV/AIDS commitments.
China has a low national HIV prevalence rate, but the HIV epidemic has for years been a major concern for the affected population (Yang et al., 2005). The target prevention strategies have been argued to be critical to curbing the epidemic and further address the stigma and discrimination associated with the disease since these have been argued to be preventing most of them from accessing key services. HIV prevalence among the (MSM) has recently been rising rapidly in China to about 7.3% by the year 2013. Stigma and Marginalization have been argued to be key factors that have affected epidemic understanding in China among the MSN. Since the millennium began, China has increasingly intensified HIV testing. Studies have shown that n reducing HIV transmission in China has become a critical concern to fight HIV.
Prevention programs have widely been developed in America for many years, but this has been taken into consideration in the last decade. Measures have been put in place to reduce sexual transmission of HIV/AIDS both in the US and China. National prevention efforts have also been tailored to focus on serodiscordant couples, condom promotion, treatment for the infected spouse and HIV testing. As a result of this, studies have shown that the level of transmission in serodiscordant couples in the year 2010 and 2013 dropped by about 57%.
In China and US, there are HIV prevention programs that have been incorporated into the school curriculum, and this has shown differing results. Most of the young people have been prone to HIV/AIDS, and these policies have proven effective in combating HIV/AIDS. Public HIV campaigns have been initiated in both countries to create public awareness of HIV epidemic such as The Youth Red Ribbon in China offers education for the adolescent and young people. Prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) has been enhanced throughout the US and China to reduce the rates of transmission (Lu et al., 2008).
There has been the development of antiretroviral treatment (ART). The number of people receiving treatment has risen rapidly in the two countries. The US was the first to adopt the WHO guidelines for the treatment of HIV, but China implemented these guidelines in these guidelines recently. Overall the treatment has been successful in the two states reducing the mortality rates caused by HIV/AIDS. In the US, NIAID together with other research bodies has been successful in the development of HIV drug to fight HIV/AIDS infection. There is, therefore, a greater detection of HIV/AIDS in the US that has been successful in improving the quality of life of people living with HIV/AIDS in the US.
In conclusion, it is clear that HIV transmission and treatment in the US and China is slightly different, but common measures have been adopted for the use of antiretroviral treatment to combat its spread.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2005). HIV prevalence, unrecognized infection, and HIV testing among men who have sex with men--five US cities, June 2004-April 2005. MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report , 54 (24), 597.
Lu, L., Jia, M., Ma, Y., Yang, L., Chen, Z., Ho, D. D., ... & Zhang, L. (2008). The changing face of HIV in China. Nature , 455 (7213), 609-611.
Yang, H., Li, X., Stanton, B., Liu, H., Liu, H., Wang, N., ... & Chen, X. (2005). Heterosexual transmission of HIV in China: a systematic review of behavioral studies in the past two decades. Sexually transmitted diseases , 32 (5), 270.
