10/28 Readings: HIV/AIDS in Asia vs. Africa

Most of the stories that exist about HIV/AIDS only talk about how it has been ravaging Africa but many forget that this disease is a pandemic, that is has been affected other countries that are only a close scale to some African countries when it comes to limitted resources and social and economic infrastructure. India and China are obviously not on the same scale as most African countries but they do have large populations of people who live at a poverty level and in these societies, HIV/AIDS comes with almost as much baggage as it does in Africa: the stigma, limited resources, limited access to effective treatment that is expensive, just as many opportunistic infections. The Adverse Effects articles was interesting because it focused on two subjects that are not the public eye does not always see in the literature: negative affects of some antiretroviral treatment cocktails and its patterns in India. I had no prior knowledge of the negative effects of the generic HAART drugs; one only hears that they inhibit the HIV retrovirus at many points and that they increase a person's survivorship, which they do but not without negative consequences. The others continually expressed that it was generic HAART initiation that caused adverse affects (56%) in a cohort study where 50% developed anemia, 41% IRS, 42% rash, 76% SJSand 60% hepatis all within 12 weeks of initiation. And yet, the World Health Organization only recommends checking hemoglobin and liver enzymes if symptoms develop? Unfortunately, by the time symptoms develop, the patient might be more at risk; for instance, anemia is a significant precursor of AIDS disease progression and increases the HIV patient's risk of death. Therefore there needs to be earlier monitoring of hemoglobin and liver cells as the authors conclude.
The second article "Asia and Africa: On Different Trajectories" I found very interesting. It went more indepth into the HIV/AIDS path in Asia than any article i've read about HIV/AIDS in Asia. It is definitely an eye opener because when you think of HIV/AIDS spreading across the world, you, the average person, might assume that it is the same from continent to continent. But just as it is different from country to country in Africa, it is different from continent to continent primarily because it is more concentrated in high risk groups such as IV drug users, sex workers and gay men in Asia. It is interesting to thing that even if HIV/AIDS does not become an general population epidemic in Asia as it has in Africa, the number of people with HIV/AIDs in Asia could possibly surpass that of HIV+ positive Africans just because most Asian countries are densely populated and a mere 4% of the population actually represents a huge 25 million people. The big difference between the HIV/AIDS distribution in Africa as opposed to Asia teaches us alot about the dynamics of this virus: how it takes advantage of the resources(IV drug users, sex workers, gays, heterosexual sex) that are available: it seems to know which "resource" is more common from country to country and continent to continent and which will spread the disease the most number of people.