HIV and college students (blog 9)

Just a little note:Before I started on this blog I just wanted to apologize for missing last weeks blog. I was hospitalized after I found out I had leukemia. I am still in the hospital trying to kick this cancers butt but hopefully I should be out soon, and now that I have a schedule here school is no longer really a problem.

This week in class: This week in class the question of the week was talking about how what if your HIV child bit another child what w0uld you do? It is crazy to think about how much more the parent of an HIV positive child has to worry. Your child cant really be a child and has to grow up a lot faster because they have to worry about not doing things like this which is really sad. And then you have to think about when a situation does arise and you alert the parents. How are the parents going to react? Is your child going to have to switch schools? Is he/she going to be treated differently because of their illness? Its saddens me to think of all the things that could go wrong in a small situation of just a child biting another child.

On another note: Because we are college students I thought that it would be interesting to talk a little bit about HIV/AIDS and college students. While researching and looking over various sites I realized a couple of things in particular about college students as a whole. A lot of college students engage in risky behavior and don't even really know it. Factors such as peer pressure. drugs and alcohol greatly increase these risky behaviors. Many people who would not normally consent to unprotected sex according to center for disease control and prevention under the influence would end up having unprotected sex, which then leads to a whole string of other issues such as HIV/AIDS, pregnancy, STD's, STI's etc. I wanted to get a little bit more information so I dug up some more information and found out the the University of Central Florida did an assessment of risky behaviors in students. One part of the assessment was a knowledge test. The knowledge test was a simple test asking questions about risky behaviors, sexually transmitted infections, and pregnancy. 64 percent of the students who took this assessment recieved a D which is a failing grade on the test. After reading about this I was a little worried about the standards of students on our campus but UCF quickly redeeemed itself. Even though a good number of people expected their partners to have protection, a good number of people in the study said they carried protection, and even more said that they would stop sexual intercourse if their was no condomn present. This shows that people have started being more responsible when it comes to risky behaviors.

Cites:
(1995). Hiv and college students. Retrieved from http://www.aegis.com/pubs/Cdc_Fact_sheets/1995/CPATH003.html

Melissa Castora. (Spring 2005). The Assessment of university students' knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors toward sex. University of Central Florida- Undergraduate Research Journal, 1(1), Retrieved from http://www.urj.ucf.edu/vol1issue1/castora/index.php

Switzerland and AIDS

Sorry about last week and not posting up a blog. I have been in and out of the hospital the past couple of weeks because of my anemia. But I am now back on track. The country that I chose to look into was Switzerland. I wanted to know what some of the European states were doing about the HIV/AIDS epidemic. I came to see that in Switzerland they have a pretty good hold on the situation. According to the university of California, San Francisco the adult prevalence of AIDS in Switzerland is 0.6 percent. Over the years they have been able to control the spread of AIDS. One of the things that I thought was interesting about Switzerland is one of the laws that they have implemented. Before you have unprotected sex you have to tell the person about your personal history. If you transmit HIV/AIDS to someone else you can be considered liable in a court of law whether you knew or not. With this law it forces people to be aware and check. Awareness is key and having to tell your sexual history makes it easier for others to know, and knowing makes it easier to make the proper precautions. When it comes to confidentiality and the laws that they have put in place. Switzerland goes by the UNAIDS protocol. This is simply rules and regulations that are designed to protect people living with the disease, so that they can have normal lives. These protocols protect people in the nine areas of everyday life, and at three levels: legislation, written regulations, and actual practices. That to me was a sigh of relief. It is refreshing to know that there are certain places that are really doing things to try and get a hold of this epidemic. And it is also nice to know that they are trying to help others affected by the virus be able to have a normal life, and not have to worry about being discriminated because of it.


Cite:

Bernard, Edwin. (2008, July 18). European AIDS treatment group. Retrieved from www.eatg.org

(2001). HIV/AIDS institutional discrimination in Switzerland. Social science and medicin, 52(10), Retrieved from www.sciencedirect.com doi: 10.1016/S0277-9536(00)00266-5