Kaitlynn Enos
Section 303
12/1/14
Title: Meera Senthilingam, 11:19 AM EST, Mon December 1, 2014, Are we on the road to an HIV vaccine?, CNN Health, http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/01/health/are-we-on-the-road-to-an-hiv-vaccine/index.html?hpt=he_c1

Article Summary: The article begins by describing how easily a virus can be spread from person to person, and how this rapid ability to move quickly through a group of people causes a great need for vaccinations against such viruses. This article takes a specific look at AIDS and why the vaccination for this specific virus is more complicated to create. In recent years, vaccines have been paired together to try and attack different parts of the virus, and although the results were substantially better than anything else that had been tried, the percent of people whose risk of contracting HIV was still too low. More recently, a vaccine against HIV was created, and became the first vaccine to successfully protect against the infection. The difficulty with creating a vaccine, the article describes, is that the viruses are constantly changing and mutating, making it hard to create a treatment that covers all the virus’s variants. Hope of a full vaccine by the next generation looks promising, but with all the variations in the virus, it’s hard to say exactly when it will be created. Most people who have HIV are not even aware that they have it, which makes it all the more greater of a reason to create a vaccine. The article describes how even 50% protection rate if good enough for a vaccine to be put on the market because vaccines are constantly being reformed and made better with more knowledge.

Relevance to Health System: This article covers some very important health care topics that are directly relevant to the health care systems and policies around us. First, the article discusses the need to expand and distribute AIDS vaccines to Africa. According to globalissues.org, in 2008, 7 out of 10 deaths from AIDS were found in Sub-Saharan Africa. Africa accounts for 70% of people living with AIDS, a number which is only growing as the virus is spread from generation to generation and partner to partner due to lack of protection against the virus. This is an extremely alarming number, considering Africa only accounts for 15% of the world’s population. The problem is rooted in the lack of knowledge about the virus and transmission as well as lack of funds and means to distribute necessary protection against the virus. The need to find a cure is vital as the number of infected continues to increase. Another health care topic related to this article looks at