World AIDS Day marked around world

/AzerNews/

By Amina Nazarli

On December 1, the world speaks about AIDS and its treatment. It is a day to raise public awareness of the disease and demonstrate international solidarity in the fight against it.

The World AIDS Day has been celebrated across the globe since December 1, 1988. In 2014, it is holding under the slogan of “Close the gap”.

A red ribbon is a symbol of the World AIDS Day. The traditional symbol was suggested by artist Frank Moore.

Today, there are more than 35 million people living with HIV around the world, 13 million of them get the antiretroviral therapy.

Head of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV / AIDS (UNAIDS), Michel Sidibe spoke about the possibility to overcoming AIDS by 2030. It will prevent the emergence of about 28 million new HIV infections and save the lives of about 21 million people around the world.

Another aim of the organization is to decrease the annual number of new HIV infected people by 75 percent (up to 500,000 people) by 2020.

HIV infection was firstly reported in Azerbaijan in 1987. And since then 4,859 people are suffering from this disease. Some 4695 of them are citizens of Azerbaijan (3572 -men, 1122- women), while 165 out of this number are foreigners.

The main routes of infection in the country are injecting drug users (60percent) and unprotected sex (30percent). The remaining cases are minimal.

Azerbaijani Health Ministry has applied antiretroviral therapy since November, 2006 in order to prevent and treat the HIV-infected patients.

Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a disease spectrum of the human immune system caused by infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

Following initial infection, a person may experience a brief period of influenza-like illness. This is typically followed by a prolonged period without symptoms.

As the infection progresses, it interferes more and more with the immune system, making the person much more susceptible to common infections like tuberculosis, as well as opportunistic infections and tumors that do not usually affect people who have working immune systems.