Government's Findings and Investigations on HIV/AIDS in the United States

Government's Findings and Investigations on HIV/AIDS in the United States
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Infectious Disease and Public Health
HIV/AIDS has been affecting people from different parts of the world for more than three decades. It is believed that the disease originally affected chimpanzees in the 1920s, and the first case of human infection came from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Before the 1980s, the disease was not common among human beings. However, data has suggested that the epidemic began in the mid-1970s. By the early 1980s, the disease had affected people from five continents, including Africa, Europe, Australia, South America and North America (Ransome et al., 2018). For over thirty years, HIV/AIDS has devastated the world population because of its adverse symptoms and effects on human health. However, technological advances have helped in reducing the number of infections in recent years.
The first case of HIV/AIDS in the United States was reported in 1981, but not much was known about it. Initially, researchers described it as a rare lung infection known as Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), which was common among previously healthy gay men. Researchers would later indicate that the disease also affected individuals who injected drugs. By the end of 1981, the disease had affected more than 270 gay men and led to the deaths of at least 120 (Ransome et al., 2018). The CDC would not have an exact name for the disease until September of 1982, when it indicated that acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a serious disease that causes a defect in the patient’s immune system.
Although HIV/AIDS has caused adversely affected communities in developing countries, there are multiple cases of patients with the condition in western nations. For instance, as of 2018, more than one million people were living with HIV/AIDS in the US, with one in every seven individuals unaware that they are infected. Additionally, the country recorded 38,000 new cases in 2017, which is a huge number considering the United States is one of the world’s biggest funders of HIV/AIDS response organizations. In 2010, President Barrack Obama initiated the county’s first HIV/AIDS strategy, updated in 2015 and running until 2020. The strategy was struct...