This week was a less stressful and more easy going on my books. My oldest daughter's second baby has not arrived yet, they're giving her until the 1rst to induce her into labor. My youngest son just turn 18 this week and to me this was the hardest things I ever had to celebrate. He's the one that had giving us the most challenges as parents and I am very afraid of his decision making now that he is "legal". I finally found my cousin online this week and we chatted for a while and he was telling me how well he was doing and how he just graduated from computer programming and he found a job, all while keeping up with his doctor's appointment and his retroviral medications. I am extremely proud of him and happy that he has kept himself very strong and healthy, which it takes a lot of dicipline to keep up with his medicines on a daily basis. He is very optimist and this trait I need to get in gallons of it.
This week has been a very family focused and the majority of it is due to this class because it does make one more aware of what you could lose for the lack of information and all these diseases, the images just get stuck to my brain and all I can think is if my kids would know and experience all these maybe then they'll grow some common sense and think their decisions twice.
I kept watching the news this week, and I kept hearing the National weather service saying Washington got more than a foot of snow 13 times since 1870, and I saw on TV last night how President Obama was giving a speech on a Nevada conference and he also mentioned how how so far Washington has got up to 5 feet of snow. He proceeded to explain all the changes cause by Global warming and that we have to cope with it and make changes to deal with this by doing our part and all. But I could think is what about the changes that still need to be done as far as including HIV education in our children's classrooms. I know it had nothing to do with it but to me HIV related completely with global warming because of all the drastic changes, and people freaking out, scared of what's next, and how to deal with it, what techniques need to be done to help this crisis get better like fuel efficient gas and recycling. Anyways, HIV/AIDS is also a crisis that need people need to be more aware and many more things have to be done to fight the ignorance with wisdom on this subject at least nationally speaking.
DO YOU KNOW...
Only 12 HIV positive babies has been born in CUBA since the first case was discovered in 1986 (Hoffman, 2004).
In US there has been 35 times more death from AIDS than in CUBA. As of February 2003, reported a rate 10 times higher than in CUBA, with a 0.03% of the population or about 1 million American infected with HIV (Hoffman, 2004).
50% of infected women has HIV in the vagina and cervix. C-section reduces the exposure time of the baby throughout the vaginal tract in contact with his or her mother's fluids, which reduces the possibilities of infection (CAFRA news, 2001).
Mother's can reduce their baby's risk from 25% to 8% by using by AZT, antiviral therapy, during the last 6 months of pregnancy (CAFRA news, 2001).
The transmission of HIV to babies is very low in CUBA, where there is a service completely dedicated to women carriers who choose to have their babies.
The direct transmission is 0.34% of all the cases of HIV/AIDS in the entire country. This indicates that CUBA is among the lowest reported internationally (CAFRA news, 2001).
The Caribbean is the second most infected region in the planet by HIV/AIDS (Mas, 2006).
CUBA posseses a prevalence of 0,007; this prevalence is the lowest of the region and one of the lowest in the world (Mas, 2006).
In CUBA, HIV/AIDS patients get free mandatory educational treatment for everyone, free medical attention, free treatment for any STD's, free retroviral medications. As a result, the quality of life is much higher than sick people in another part of the world (Mas, 2006).
Work cited
Web: retrieved february 20,2010 from CAFRA news. Hernandez Y.,Vila L.,Naya Z.,Lopez Y. Women and HIV/AIDS. 2001. http://www.cafra.org/spip.php?article183
Web: retrived february 20, 2010 from CAFRA news. Mas S. 2006. http://www.cafra.org/spip.php?article 680
video: retrieved on February 20,2010 from www.utube.com/watch?v=aWzCFPfYrg
Web: retrived February 20, 2010 from Mas S. 2004. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2688320/
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Flor..Congrats on the new addition to your family. I really enjoyed your post and how you are connecting with your family. And yes, it was a mess here in DC with all the snow...and it shut down the government for a week (i was glad that i didn't have to go to work but i had to work from home..such a bummer). I think you maybe onto somethings here with the drastic weather changes having a direct correlation with the psyche of people today. I also like how you are becoming more aware of what's going on. I think you should use the information and experience from this class and advocate when you have time...you can be the change in education that you want to see..if you talk to your local health department about volunteering or taking a counseling class to help out with group therapy you will start a movement...dont stop what you are doing..and much success on the newborn that is due any day now.
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