As known now the AIDS is the most dangerous infection, not only in Africa, but all over the world as well, many has been dead and many are dying at that moment you are reading this document infected with AIDS.

Still Millions around the world are not provided with the minimum level of details that they should be aware of to protect themselves from AIDS.

Now let's see what Aids is?

AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome:

Acquired means you can get infected with it;

Immune Deficiency means a weakness in the body's system that fights diseases.

Syndrome means a group of health problems that make up a disease.

AIDS is caused by a virus called HIV, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. If you get infected with HIV, your body will try to fight the infection. It will make "antibodies", special molecules that are supposed to fight HIV.

When you get a blood test for HIV, the test looks for these antibodies. If you have them in your blood, it means that you have HIV infection. People who have the HIV antibodies are called "HIV-Positive"

Being HIV-positive, or having HIV disease, is not the same as having AIDS. Many people are HIV-positive but don't get sick for many years. As HIV disease continues, it slowly wears down the immune system. Viruses, parasites, fungi and bacteria that usually don't cause any problems can make you very sick if your immune system is damaged. These are called "opportunistic infections".

You don't actually "get" AIDS. You might get infected with HIV, and later you might develop AIDS.

You can get infected with HIV from anyone who's infected, even if they don't look sick, and even if they haven't tested HIV-positive yet. The blood, vaginal fluid, semen, and breast milk of people infected with HIV has enough of the virus in it to infect other people. Most people get the HIV virus by:

·         Having sex with an infected person.

·         Sharing a needle (shooting drugs) with someone who's infected

·         Being born when the mother is infected, or drinking the breast milk of an infected woman.

Getting a transfusion of infected blood used to be a way people got AIDS, but now the blood supply is screened very carefully and the risk is extremely low.

There are no documented cases of HIV being transmitted by tears or saliva, but it is possible to be infected with HIV through oral sex or in rare cases through deep kissing, especially if you have open sores in your mouth or bleeding gums.

You might not know if you get infected by HIV. Some people get fever, headache, sore muscles and joints, stomach ache, swollen lymph glands, or a skin rash for one or two weeks. Most people think it's the flu. Some people have no symptoms.

The virus will multiply in your body for a few weeks or even months before your immune system responds. During this time, you won't test positive for HIV, but you can infect other people.

When your immune system responds, it starts to make antibodies. When this happens, you will test positive for HIV.

After the first flu-like symptoms, some people with HIV stay healthy for ten years or longer. But during this time, HIV is damaging your immune system.

HIV disease becomes AIDS when your immune system is seriously damaged. If you have less than 200 CD4+ cells or if your CD4+ percentage is less than 14%, you have AIDS.

What's CD4+ Cells?

Also called T-4 cells; a type of lymphocyte (white blood cell). They are an important part of the immune system. They are "helper" cells. They lead the attack against infections.

When HIV infects humans, the cells it infects most often are CD4+ cells. The virus becomes part of the cells, and when they multiply to fight an infection, they also make more copies of HIV.

When someone is infected with HIV for a long time, the number of CD4+ cells they have (their T-cell count) goes down. This is a sign that the immune system is being weakened. The lower the T-cell count, the more likely the person will get sick.

There are millions of different families of T-cells. Each family is designed to fight a specific type of germ. When HIV reduces the number of T-cells, some of these families can be totally wiped out. You can lose the ability to fight off the particular germs those families were designed for.

That all was an overlook for AIDS and what it states for, now let's take a look at some data figures about Aids:

Worldwide, and in 2000 alone, AIDS claimed 3 million people last year. That's over 8,000 people every day. But the story does not end there: just under 14,000 new cases of HIV infections occur every single day.

95% of all AIDS cases occur in the world's poorest countries. In several southern African countries, at least one in five adults is HIV positive. In 2000, the HIV prevalence rate among pregnant women in South Africa rose to its highest level ever: 24.5% bringing to 4.7 million the estimated total number of South Africans living with the virus.

That's a terrifying thought. And it's the reality that millions of people in developing countries are living with HIV and AIDS as you read this: communities devastated, teachers and doctors dying every day, people's futures shattered, because they can't afford the drug treatments that are helping people living with HIV and AIDS in richer countries.

Sub-Saharan Africa is a "fertile breeding ground" for the disease" UN Development Program."

Across the southern quadrant of Africa, this nightmare is real. The word not spoken is AIDS, and here at ground zero of humanity's deadliest cataclysm, the ultimate tragedy is that so many people don't know or don't want to know what is happening, many AIDS-hit families are forced to sell land or withdraw their children from school!

As the HIV virus sweeps mercilessly through these lands the fiercest trial Africa has yet endured a few try to address the terrible depredation. The rest of society looks away. Flesh and muscle melt from the bones of the sick in packed hospital wards and lonely bush kraals. Corpses stack up in morgues until those on top crush the identity from the faces underneath. Raw earth mounds scar the landscape, grave after grave without name or number. Bereft children grieve for parents lost in their prime, for siblings scattered to the winds.

The victims don't cry out. Doctors and obituaries do not give the killer its name. Families recoil in shame. Leaders shirk responsibility. The stubborn silence announces victory for the disease: denial cannot keep the virus at bay.

The developed world is largely silent too. AIDS in Africa has never commanded the full-bore response the West has brought to other, sometimes lesser, travails. We pay sporadic attention, turning on the spotlight when an international conference occurs, then turning it off. Good-hearted donors donate; governments acknowledge that more needs to be done. But think how different the effort would be if what is happening here were happening in the West.

By now you've seen pictures of the sick, the dead, the orphans. You've heard appalling numbers: the number of new infections, the number of the dead, the number who are sick without care, the number walking around already fated to die.

In fact, every day good people are doing good things, who use their own fund-raising to run an extensive volunteer home-care program.

But these efforts can help only thousands; they cannot turn the tide. The region is caught in a double bind. Without treatment, those with HIV will sicken and die; without prevention, the spread of infection cannot be checked. Southern Africa has no other means available to break the vicious cycle, except to change everyone's sexual behavior and that isn't happening.

The essential missing ingredient is leadership. Neither the countries of the region nor those of the wealthy world have been able or willing to provide it.

South Africa, comparatively well off, comparatively well educated, has blundered tragically for years. AIDS invaded just when apartheid ended, and a government absorbed in massive transition relegated the disease to a back page. An attempt at a national education campaign wasted millions on a farcical musical. The premature release of a local wonder drug ended in scandal when the drug turned out to be made of industrial solvent. Those fiascoes left the government skittish about embracing expensive programs, inspiring a 1998 decision not to provide azt to HIV-positive pregnant women. Zimbabwe too suffers savagely from feckless leadership. Even in Botswana, where the will to act is gathering strength, the resources to follow through have to come from foreign hands.

AIDS' grip here is so pervasive and so complex that all societies must rally round to break it. These countries are too poor to doctor themselves. The drugs that could begin to break the cycle will not be available here until global pharmaceutical companies find ways to provide them inexpensively. The health-care systems required to prescribe and monitor complicated triple-cocktail regimens won't exist unless rich countries help foot the bill. If there is ever to be a vaccine, the West will have to finance its discovery and provide it to the poor. The cure for this epidemic is not national but international.

The deep silence that makes African leaders and societies want to deny the problem, the corruption and incompetence that render them helpless is something the West cannot fix. But the fact that they are poor is not. The wealthy world must help with its zeal and its cash if southern Africa is ever to be freed of the AIDS plague.

So, please put your hand in ours, provide the help you can do, Sponsor, Donate, or Volunteer, to put a smile on a dying child's face.

By:

Mohamed Hussein