Australian National Notifiable Disease: Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) (Essay Sample)

Australian National Notifiable Disease: Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) Name Institution Australian National Notifiable Disease: Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) Introduction Humans have never been subject to viruses that have swiftly wrecked and resulted in devastations such as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The HIV causes the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). AIDS has wrecked havoc in all countries globally claiming victims without regard to age, class, race, sexual orientation or gender. The prevalence nature of this disease has resulted in many countries declaring it as a national pandemic besides states allocating funds for research and education on the treatment and prevention of its causative virus HIV. In the developed nations such as Australia, the disease has come to be perceived as less fatal disease, in addition to, being a manageable chronic condition. However, in the developing countries such as Swaziland where access to health care and medications is difficult, the picture is calamitous. Globally only one in five people at the risk of infection with the causative virus HIV has access to prevention services. Since the discovery of the HIV as the cause of immunodeficiency in adults initially in 1981, by the start of the early 1990s the disease was causing havoc among many people globally, especially in the developing countries. Australia as a country has also been subject to the AIDS menace. For this reason, the paper purposes to discuss the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) as a notifiable disease in Australia. Historical Background of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) The origin of the HIV and the disease it causes AIDS is hard to pinpoint. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention alleged that a type of chimpanzee in West Africa was the source of the HIV infection among humans. The organization further asserted that a virus containing the HIV entered the human blood system by humans coming into contact with the blood of the chimpanzee in their hunting activities. Over the years, the virus spread in parts of Africa and later spread to other continents. The earliest documented case of HIV/AIDS was in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. In spite of the detection of the HIV in the 1980s, the virus was in existence in 1940s but was only a pathogen in 1980s (Linton, 2016, p. 663). Description of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome The acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a creation of a retrovirus identified as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The infection of the virus involves the HIV attacking the T-helper cells that support the immune functioning. However, the HIV does not affect or alter the T-suppressor cells, which are responsible for shutting down the immune system in the human system. The resultant effect is an imbalance between these two cells (T-helper and T-suppressor cells), which causes the body to be at risk for infections (Price, Gwin, and Price, 2007, p. 86). In the instance of the human immunodeficiency virus infection, the virus only attacks and infects the lymphocytes and brain cells; however, the virus can infect any body organ. AIDS is an immune deficiency system with an affinity of infections, secondary neoplasms, and neurologic disease. AIDS and HIV infection are not similar. AIDS is the state of severe immune deficiency caused by the HIV infection. For this reason, people with HIV infections are not affected rigorously enough for an AIDS diagnosis to be made (Wheeler, Wong, and Shanley, 2014, p. 44). The criteria for the diagnosis of the AIDS involve certain laboratory abnormalities and the presence of infections, malignancies, or other conditions. In most developed countries, the diagnosis of AIDS involves peripheral blood CD4+ lymphocyte count that is below 200 cells per microliter while other laboratories look at evidence of HIV infection, which is by detection of the HIV antibodies or antigens in the blood. Another form of laboratory diagnosis entails looking at particular types of infections or recurrent usually by organisms that normally do not produce infections in patients with a standard immune system (opportunistic infections) for instance avian (bird) tuberculosis. It may also involve progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, degenerative disease of brain white matter or certain types of neoplasms (AIDS-defining neoplasms) for instance the B-cell lymphoma of the brain, Kaposi Sarcoma or invasive cancer of the cervix (McConnell, 2007, p. 168). Pathophysiology of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome With a population of forty million people living with AIDS globally, this cell-mediated immune system failure condition is a pandemic. As a retrovirus, HIV carries the genetic code for its reproduction in ribonucleic acid (RMA). Once inside the CD4 cell, it utilizes enzymes called reverse transcriptase to alter this viral RNA to deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). The viral DNA integrates into the CD4 cell’s DNA. As the infected cell in human system reproduces, it involuntarily produces viral copies. As the virus replicates inside the CD4 cell, it buds from the CD4 cell surface destroying the cell membrane along with releasing millions of viral copies into the bloodstream (Madara and Pomarico-Denino, 2008, p. 69). Chemokine receptors (CXCR4 and CCR5) have yielded new insight into the HIV infectious procedure. Chemokines, peptides present on leukocytes, uses these Chemokine receptors to gain entry into the CD4 cells. An inactivating mutation occurs in the CCR5 gene responsible for providing resistance to HIV infection, which leaves the immune system vulnerable (Ansari and Silvestri, 2014, p. 64). If an individual with this mutation does become infected, the disease progresses gradually. The plasma viral load or the number of viral particle per millimeter of blood is an indicator of clinical progression of this condition. A viral load below ten thousand copies per milliliter signals control of the disease and low possibility of disease progression. However, a viral load above a hundred thousand copies per milliliter signals a poor prognosis as well as a high risk of disease progression. The objective of the antiviral therapy is to limit the viral load to a level at which the human immune system can control. Treatment failure of AIDS is evident from rising viral load even in the absence of symptoms (Ehrlich and Schroeder, 2014, p. 21). In an acute stage of AIDS, the infected person is asymptomatic except for short-lived (2 weeks or less), mild flu-like symptoms. During this asymptomatic phase, the body’s T-cells are many enough to control the virus making the person symptom free in spite the person being able to transmit the virus. The asymptomatic phase often lasts few weeks or eight to ten years based on the strength of the individual immune system and the amount of virus transmitted in an infection. During the persistent generalized lymphadenopathy stage, the individual often has several enlarged inguinal lymph nodes (Le, 2015, p. 8). Eventually, the viral cell number will significantly outnumber healthy T-cells leading to a weakened immune system as well as a development of neurological disease, opportunistic infections and neoplasms characteristic of AIDS. The term AIDS refers to a person with HIV typified by CD4 cell count of less than two hundred cubic millimeters. Diseases linked to AIDS are wasting syndrome, Kaposi’s sarcoma and opportunistic infections such as candidacies. Opportunistic infections along with neoplasms develop because the immune system is weak to kill malignant cells or viruses and bacteria. Disorders occurring include AIDS dementia complex, neoplasms and opportunistic infections such as pneumocystis carinii, tuberculosis, mycobacterium avium complex, and candidiasis (Broaddus, et al., 2015, p. 71). Demographic Characteristic of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome Demographically people living with AIDS in Australia are young mainly under the age of fifty years. The bulk of the population is predominantly male, disproportionately from racial and ethnic minorities. The prevalence of AIDS is primarily in metropolitan areas with the transmission of the disease both hetero and homosexuals. Globally men account for about seventy-four percent of the AIDs cases reported in 2015 higher as compared to cases reported by women. For men, the cases reported stand at 20.0/100,000 as compared to 6.4/100,000 cases for women (Zenilman, and Shahmanesh, 2012. Based on the statistical information by the World Health Organization, adolescents and young adults particularly Africans men and women have a high rate of reported cases of AIDS. Persons above fifty years account for only twenty-four percent of the cases reported of AIDS hence only 10.8% of HIV infections occur in persons above fifty years (Bennett, Dolin, and Blaser, 2015, p. 1489). In Australia, by the conclusion of 2015, about thirty-five thousand persons had the HIV infection with about thirty thousand people living with AIDS. About seven thousand women aged fifteen years and above in Australia have the disease with about 12% of the infected persons being unaware of their status. Approximately 0.2% of the Australian population is living with the disease. The prevalence of the disease is at about a thousand cases of infection annually in the country with about 1081 Australians being infected with HIV in 2015 (Seckinelgin, 2016, p. 12). In Australia, the HIV transmission entails 70% of the transmission occurring among men engaging in sex with other men, 5% attributing to male-to-male injecting drug use, 19% attributing to heterosexual sex and 3% mode of transmission being unknown. In terms of race, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people accounted for 33 of the 1081 cases, with the infection rate being higher as compared to non-indigenous Australians. Of this reported infections from Abori...