HIV Project Description

HIV/AIDS encompasses a wide array of topics ranging from many aspects of medicine, conspicuously, to social, political, economic and educational implications. And the areas of topics continue to increase as it continues to horribly devastate more than half of the world. And when it comes to choosing a topic I would like to zero in and research, it is difficult because there are so many and they all interact with each other some way or another. So rather than giving a detailed description of my project, I will describe three topics that I have narrowed down to. And as I continue to do research on each of them, the more I will know and the more questions I will have. I will zero in on which ever one arises many questions.
My first topic is HIV/AIDS in children. I want to learn more about how HIV/AIDS affects the lives of children, what the most common ways of contracting the disease are and how the children deal with this unjust and unfair burden. Specifically, I want to look at orphans and how much access they have to treatment or help when they are left alone and sick. I have always been interested in how the lives of children are affected by strife, poverty and war because I myself have experienced it. Now HIV/AIDS affects children just as badly if not worse than poverty and war. Not only but the mixture of all these factors makes life even more hard. I am looking for the best way to go around intervening for the children and so it is important that I am educated about the difficulties and obstacles that HIV/AIDS adds onto their already hard lives.
My second topic is accessibility to treatment. In this age of continous scientific research in all areas of HIV/AIDS, we endlessly hear about drugs being developed that are more effective or less toxic that would in effect alleviate the pandemic. Yet, the numbers continue to increase. Where do these drugs go? Why don't the people who need them ever get them? Of course there are the obvious answers: the drugs are too expensive, infrastructure in poor countries makes it almost impossible for residents of rural and isolated villages to get to the drugs even if they are free and on and on. But what about all the NGOs whose aim is to alleviate the crisis by attacking the disease in people? What role do they play and how effective are they? Can we trust the numbers they give us? How can drug companies contribute if they do? What have government plans like the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and institutions such as the UNAIDS contributed?
My third topic is exploring the stigma surrounding the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It is interesting how a disease that has had such a ubiquitously destructive effect around the world still causes people to isolate others who are infected. On one side, it makes sense that one wants to stay away from those infected but then again, we're all humans, aren't we supposed to work together for the good of the community, in this case the global community. What good does shunning a sick widow with two kids away have on society? Even in progressive societies such as those of the West, some people still stigmatize the disease and isolate the affected in their communities. So I want to look at ways, we could decrease the stigma associated with AIDS especially in developing countries where stigma might be the deciding factor between the virus being contained in a community or spreading? Can we understand what people are thinking and why they feel more confortable in just stigmatizing something rather than dealing with it openly?
So my topics are pretty distinct from each other but they also interact with each other. The more informed I am about the more, the more questions I can have that I hope will be answered during or as a result of my project.