Viruses are what dominate the planet of diseases and what cause the deadliest diseases in the world. But even with the deadliest diseases one can still fight off the disease – sometimes it completely goes away and sometimes it doesn’t go but still it does wash away some of the disease, with the help of our immune system. Our immune system has a vast number of actions and cells to fight off infections and diseases. But what if there wasn’t any immune system at all?
The HIV or the Human Immunodeficiency Virus is this dreadful disease that causes this dreadful case of collapsed immune system. Let us know a bit about this virus before it is too late for the world.
The virus does not come in contact when a person sneezes or coughs, it comes from body fluids like blood or semen. When the person comes in contact with these body fluids the viruses enter the body. Some pathogens hide in other cells like RBCs and other cells but this one hides in the immune cells itself. It hides in the CD4T cells and other important components of the immune system. The immune system does recognize the virus and kills it. But the real question is if the immune system kills all of it why do we still have HIV? A tiny fraction of the virus does survive the forces from our immune system so they grow and divide inside the CD4T cells, and from time to time each cell wakes from a deep slumber and bursts out the HIV virus into the body. This cycle keeps going on until the immune system finally collapses. If untreated it can cause AIDS. Most of the time the disease progresses into AIDS because HIV is asymptomatic.
On a global scale, 38 million people are affected by HIV/AIDS out which 1.8 million are children alone. In India 1 million people are affected alone.
AIDS Day, celebrated on 1st December, people all over the world join hands and unite to support for the people living with AIDS or HIV and remember those who had died from the disease. Many people wear a red ribbon – a symbol of awareness, support and unity to shower love, blessings, support and happiness to all people living with HIV or AIDS.
In 2014 “Close the Gap” on AIDS had taken place – to empower and enable all people, everywhere, to the services they require. This means the people who are not aware that they are HIV positive can begin to get support. People with HIV can get access to life-saving medicine and children with HIV will also be able to get access. Not just the few who have access today and all people will be included as the part of the solution. In 2019 communities had made a priceless contribution to AIDS, people all over the world had supported the HIV services, defended their human rights and supported their peers. The common people are the biggest pillar of support to AIDS. “Global solidarity, shared responsibility” was the theme in 2020.
Around the world many people don’t get treated because of discrimination, gender inequality, no human rights etc. In 2020 we saw that the whole world was affected because of the Coronavirus and saw that if one doesn’t get treatment because of these non-human rights issues and remain sick, this can affect other people. Hence, the previous year, the theme ‘Global Solidarity, shared responsibility’ was made to show that health and these critical issues are interlinked. So, if we stop these non-human right acts and unite and support each other, it would be the key to ending pandemics of HIV and AIDS.
Most people in the world today are dying of AIDS because of discrimination, gender inequality, and other such issues, we must stop all these if we want to get HIV cases to zero. We must support and unite to help all HIV patients get treatment. Many people also abandon children who are HIV positive, Sasha is a boy who was abandoned at birth because he was HIV positive, he now sits alone in his crib at a state-run baby home.
So many people suffer from HIV and AIDS every day, though we have so many facilities, every year millions of people die due to discrimination, inequality in the community. We should all join hands and support and care for all the people with AIDS and HIV, these little storms in our life are just signs to show us to live a better life together to survive on planet Earth. We should always support HIV/AIDS people everyday and pray for this to end, because nobody is safe until everybody is safe.
By Annika Basu, Kolkata
