Monday marked the 10th Annual World AIDS Day, reminding the world of HIV and AIDS' devastating effects.
According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS, 39.5 million people worldwide have HIV. Roughly half of those contracted HIV before the age of 25, and will die before the age of 35. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the number of new AIDS cases increased for the first time in 10 years between 2001 and 2002.
\Most students think, 'People like me won't get [Sexually Transmitted Diseases',"" said UW-Madison sociology Professor John DeLamater. He teaches human sexuality to mostly freshmen and sophomores, many of whom received inadequate sex education in high school.
""College students need to understand their risk factors,"" DeLamater explained. ""Having multiple sex partners increases the risk, and having one STD compromises the immune system, making it easier to get another. Students need to use protection... and they need to find out their partner's histories.""
DeLamater said the media has shaped many students' views on AIDS. In the 1980s, HIV and AIDS were thought of as diseases of men who had sex with men. Then, in the late 1990s, the stereotype shifted to a disease affecting mostly black male drug users, DeLamater said.
""In truth, women and people under 25 have the highest rates of contracting HIV,"" he added.
In the United States, 30 percent of all new HIV infections are in women, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. New infections among women have tripled between 1986 and 2001.
The U.S. infection patterns are typical of HIV and AIDS in developed, Western countries, said Alberto Palloni, UW-Madison professor of population studies. In regions like sub-Saharan Africa, genders are infected equally.
""It's really an extraordinary disease,"" Palloni said. ""Most diseases wipe out the very young or the very old. AIDS wipes out the adults.""
Palloni and his colleagues use mathematical models to predict the effects of HIV and AIDS on sub-Sahara African populations.
Palloni predicts large increases in adult mortality, widows and orphans from AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, but he said he doubts the Western world will ever develop an HIV and AIDS epidemic like Africa's.
""It's much more difficult to trigger an epidemic when a population is educated, and the government is involved in public health,""Palloni said.
