The Global Challenges of HIV/AIDS and the Living Environment - Essay Example

"The Global Challenges of HIV/AIDS and the Living Environment" is a wonderful example of a paper on viruses. Human immunodeficiency virus kills by weakening the immune system of the body until it is no longer able to fight infections. When the immune system is weak, some illnesses called opportunistic infections attack the body making the infected person weaker and more vulnerable to death than a person who does not have the pandemic. The infections include pneumonia, tuberculosis, meningitis, and other fungal, parasitic, and other viral infections. HIV takes over a decade before developing the common disease of AIDS. It takes time before the symptoms start being evident. At this stage, the virus spreads to remarkably many people since there are no visible symptoms. In the early stages of HIV, the related symptoms include diarrhea, chronic fatigue, persistent cough, fever, weight loss, and skin rashes. Although there are people who have survived for more than twenty years without treatment, AIDS is fatal and without treatment. There is no cure for AIDS and more people die each new day leaving behind orphans, widows, and unattended families. When AIDS started to become common in the 1980s, the officials from the public health assumed that by informing the people on how to protect themselves, the disease would stop spreading. The protection method that the officials talked about was safeguarding the blood supplies. In some politically organized communities, this approach is successful. For instance, the approach helped in the reduction of the incidences of white gay men in the northern parts of America.

Populations continue to grow in affected countries although it would grow more rapidly in the absence of AIDS than it grows when there is a pandemic. The groups of people commonly diagnosed with the disease are the poor, women, people of color, and people with limited education. It is particularly intriguing that people living with AIDS, work exceptionally hard to overcome the challenges that hinder them from making the environment a better place to live around. The environmental dimensions of AIDS have received little attention in the arena of policy. Poverty is a driving force to HIV and AIDS and sustainable resource use. This means that efforts to reduce poverty could yield gains in both public health and environment protection. Poverty reduction would mean a reduction in HIV and AIDS, therefore, protection of natural resources. A lot of timber goes to the construction of the caskets used for burying the dead bodies, and if reduced, the environment would be a much better place to live around.

Although the research of HIV/AIDS and intersection with the environment is at the infant stages, early evidence suggests that HIV/AIDS, public health, and the environment policy communities would be more strong if they recognized the overlaps in their agendas. The age outline and the HIV/AIDS pandemic absolute magnitude show that the deadly disease also exerts environmental impacts at the community level. Due to poverty caused by the pandemic, local natural resources do not only serve the dietary needs but also serve as energy, as well. Many affected households cannot afford electricity and, therefore, use fuelwood to cook and to light the house during the night or even use paraffin to cook. The intensified dependence on these fuels increases environmental degradation at an unusually high rate. The deadly disease shapes the household use of the environment when it deprives of the labor performed by the dead or disabled members of the family because of the disease.  The affected families cultivate less due to loss of labor, and the surrounding environment remains neglected.

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