Pathophysiology of Emerging Infectious Disease

This report focuses on the pathophysiology of HIV/AIDS as an emerging infectious disease. It looks into the ways through which it is acquired, spread and the stages of infection as well as the control measures. HIV/AIDS is an immune deficiency syndrome that attacks the immune system making one to be susceptible to infections and diseases. HIV is mainly spread through unprotected sexual intercourse and transmission of bodily fluids like blood, saliva, and semen. The study will focus on the pathophysiology of the virus and its biological nature. The dynamic, as well as the complicated nature of the numerous emerging infectious diseases, create a gap for question between the emerging and the re-emerging infectious diseases such that different specialists classify the infections differently when they are identified.

There are emerging infectious diseases that are caused by the acquisition of new genes that cause mutation of the already existing gene formation making it very difficult to treat at the beginning due to association with other types of known infections. However, most re-emerging infections occur due to gene mutation from the primary host resulting into a more resistant strain of bacteria or virus that can be hard to treat with conventional medical procedures, (Sweeney et al. Due to a series of multiple independent events that moved from the initial host the primate to the now current hosts the humans, HIV/AIDS was able to penetrate into the human species and with the aid of demographic factors spread from one person to another.

(Rosenberg et al. Pathology of AIDS. HIV/AIDS as a highly infectious disease that passes through a series of stages before it can turn to be acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. According to the 1993 Centre for diseases control (CDC) report, the stages include, seroconversion illness that takes place between the first and six weeks after acquiring the HIV. During, this stage, there is very little evidence of the infection has occurred, and the infected person is related similarly to someone having the flu, (Morens et al. The body functioning during this stage remains in the optimum, and no physical evidence can be detected. The most common type of opportunistic diseases associated with HIV/AIDS is acute Tuberculosis. After the symptomatic stage, the full-blown AIDS stage takes over.

It is characterized by severe deficiency of immunity in the body of the infected person and high susceptibility to opportunistic diseases, at this stage medication is highly recommended to help contain the rapid multiplication of the virus and allow for treatment of the regular opportunist diseases. Since there is no known cure for the HIV, it is recommended that the patient endeavor on a life-long medication programme with no breaks to sustain the already weak immunity in the body. In rare cases, there are those patients that develop AIDS slowly or never at all. The first known prosecutions and enactments of HIV specific laws date back to 1987. The United States of America being a global leader naturally meant these laws had wider repercussions in the entire world as more nations followed suit with the establishment of their laws following the model of the USA.

The idea behind the establishments of such laws was to provide structural interventions to assess if the legal frameworks can act as facilitators or barriers to the spread of HIV. The law is, therefore, one of the essential tools in the fight of eradicating the spread and prevalence of HIV. In 1981 the United States of America became the initial country to publicly recognize the emergence of a new health disorder known as AIDS. Although criminalization of HIV exposure is a state affair, some federal legislation addresses some areas like blood donations. By 1990, 14 states had advocated and enacted HIV-specific laws. The Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act of 1990 (the CARE Act), introduced new provisions to persecute individuals that were HIV infected who did any of the following acts intentionally.

Donates blood, provides a used hypodermic needle and intends to infect another with HIV, semen or breast milk and engages in sexual activities with the intention of infecting others. The above provision was repelled in 2000 as most if not all the states had fully satisfied the requirements. As a result, many different articles have been written about the disease to discuss a range of issues including its causes, stages, spread, prevention measures and possible recommendations to raise awareness about AIDS. Also, some articles discuss the various challenges that researchers have faced in dealing with the spread of this disease. There are also laws that have been developed to help control the spread of AIDS around the world. Some of these articles have conflicting ideas regarding the disease such as articles analyzing the appropriate laws to put in place that can help control the spread of the disease effectively.

However, many articles have similar results and information about the disease such as those focusing on the cause of the disease and preventive measures. HIV/AIDS is popular and dangerous disease and its spreads an epidemic that needs to be controlled. From statistic, a significant number of people have died due to the disease, and many people are living with HIV around the world, (Rosenberg et al. As much as a cure for HIV has not been discovered yet, several recommendations are significant to help both the researchers and the public to help control the spread of the disease. Extensive research to study the HIV is essential and should be encouraged so that possible cure is discovered for its changing nature.