In many people’s minds, AIDS or the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, is the latest great scourge to hit humanity. In terms of its toll on human lives, AIDS now ranks as one of the most destructive epidemics in recorded history. However, after decades and countless millions of deaths, science and medicine have yet to find a cure. The farthest we have come in the war against AIDS/HIV is the development of treatments that can slow down its progression. But a full-fledged cure still seems beyond our reach.

By now, most adults in sophisticated societies know how AIDS works, how the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infects a person’s immune system and renders it ineffective to a host of opportunistic infections and tumors. The virus is transmitted when body fluid containing HIV comes into direct contact with a mucous membrane or the bloodstream through blood, semen, vaginal fluid, pre-seminal fluid and breast milk. Among the common methods of transmission are anal, vaginal or oral sex, blood transfusion, contaminated needles, fluids exchange between mother and baby during pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding or other exposure to one of the above bodily fluids.

Widely believed to have originated in sub-Saharan Africa during the 20th century, AIDS has now reached pandemic proportions, with an estimated 38.6 million people living with AIDS all over the world. It has killed over 25 million people since it was first recognized on June 5, 1981, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization (WHO) in January 2006. In 2005 alone, AIDS claimed over three million lives, including 570,000 children. About a third of these deaths were recorded in sub-Saharan Africa, where AIDS has been a powerful disruptive force that has ruined entire communities, destroyed human capital and retarded economic growth.

It usually takes around nine to 10 years for the HIV infection to develop into full-blown AIDS which, once contracted, has a median survival time of 9.2 months. There have been cases where HIV’s progression into AIDS took only two weeks and other cases where it took 20 years. A person’s general health, the strength of his immune system and his age are usually the determining factors that affect rate of progression.

In 1990, the WHO announced four general stages for AIDS based on patients’ infections and conditions. Medical practitioners refer to most of these as opportunistic infections that would otherwise be easily treatable in healthy people. They include:

• Stage I: HIV disease is asymptomatic and not categorized as AIDS;
• Stage II: first symptoms of HIV begin to show, including minor mucocutaneous manifestations and recurrent upper respiratory tract infections;
• Stage III: includes unexplained chronic diarrhea for longer than a month, severe bacterial infections and pulmonary tuberculosis;
• Stage IV: includes toxoplasmosis of the brain, candidiasis of the esophagus, trachea, bronchi or lungs and Kaposi's sarcoma; these diseases are indicators of AIDS.

The great majority of HIV-afflicted persons were totally unaware that they had HIV until they underwent an AIDS diagnosis with an HIV test, which detects the presence of HIV antibodies in serum, plasma, oral fluid, dried blood spots or in the urine of patients. Today, the two most common HIV tests are the HIV enzyme immunoassay and the Western blot assay.

Most people realize they have AIDS when they notice infections caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites that are normally kept in check by a healthy immune system. AIDS victims also exhibit a high incidence of cancers such as Kaposi sarcoma, cervical cancer and cancers of the immune system known as lymphomas. People with AIDS also suffer from fevers, heavy sweating (particularly at night), swollen glands, chills, weakness and weight loss.