HIV/AIDS

Prepared by
Amanda Tackett Bovard
PSYC 2301-003
November 7, 2014

Prepared for
Clint Selman
Professor, Psychology
Tyler Junior College In the past when anyone thought about HIV/AIDS being an issue, being widespread in the country, they thought about undeveloped or third world countries. I believe still to this day there is a stereotype that the virus is much more widespread in those countries and continues to spread more. when you start researching and looking at the information You see the opposite. I took three different years: 2001, 2006 and 2012; spread out to show how the disease decreased or increased. What I found personally opened my eyes because like others I thought that developed countries would fair better than undeveloped countries. I wanted to choose one undeveloped country and two developed countries so I chose Ethiopia, Japan and the United States. I was pretty shocked to see Ethiopia's percentage of people living with AIDS went down over those years whereas the percentage for both Japan and United States increased. Currently as far as the prevalence in undeveloped versus developed countries you do see a lower percentage in developed countries. This is mainly due to the number of resources that developed countries have had in the past that undeveloped countries did not. This is especially evident in the early 1990s when the world really started hearing about the HIV/AIDS virus, because of how it was spreading in places like Ethiopia and Africa in general. Some of the resources developed countries had included: supplemental milk like formula and easily accessible healthcare and therefore people in undeveloped countries could have had the virus and be spreading it without knowing. In the past you saw a lot of mothers in undeveloped countries spreading the virus to their child by doing something every mother wants to do; in which is feed their child. These countries did not have stores that you could buy milk, formula or other, from and therefore to keep their child alive they had to breastfeed and to breastfeed meant to spread the virus to the child. Even though the number had decreased by 2001 you still saw the difference in development of the country in the percentages of people living with HIV/AIDS. In the three countries I chose and here are the percentages for 2001: Ethiopia – 1.91%, Japan – 0.0053% and United States – 0.351%. In 2012 the percentages for these countries are: Ethiopia – 0.83%, Japan – 0.0071% and United States – 0.433%. All three countries have very similar preventive measures which include education about the virus, but I believe one of the reasons the percentage has gone down for Ethiopia but up for Japan and United States is the attitude of people about the virus. In Ethiopia it is more accepted if you have the virus whereas as people who have the virus in the United States or Japan are seen in a negative manner. For this reason a lot of people in Japan and the United States do not get tested until there are showing major symptoms of the immune deficiency and therefore spread the virus to others unknowingly. Some preventive measures used in all three countries are condom distribution (normally free at clinics), voluntary (anonymous) testing and counseling/educating ways to prevent spread if you have the virus. Another common way the virus is spread in the United States and Japan is injecting due to drug users using dirty needles whereas Ethiopia does not have a high rate of drug injection/dirty needle usage. This ties into part of what I would do as a healthcare administrator, because there is not a lot of