The most recent surveillance report through 2002 states that the estimated people diagnose with AIDS was 886,575, and the estimated number of deaths of people with AIDS was 501, 669. The deaths in North Carolina through December 2000 was 6,462 (HIV).These scary numbers keep growing year after year, and the public health officials found out that the only mean of prevention against HIV is education(Foster 116). According to centers of disease control, the best defense against HIV is knowledge. National campaigns are teaching the following: definitions, risk behaviors, infection stages, testing procedures, and treatment. These national campaigns are making a big change in our culture, and giving hope to infected people.
             HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is the virus that causes AIDS. Viruses are parasites that need a host to live and reproduce. HIV belongs to a special group known as retrovirus; they possessed a special enzyme that inverts genetic information. In other words, retrovirus make sick what once was healthy. HIV uses the CD4+ cell as a host, which is a cell that works in combination with the human organs to prevent invasion by foreign substances and keep the body healthy. The virus invades the CD4+ cell and change the genetic information to reproduce itself, destroy the CD4+ cell, and then all the new viruses invade new CD4's and repeat the process. As the body uses the CD4's to fight the invader, it keeps losing its defenses and once the body is too weak to fight, is what we call AIDS (Foster 1).
             AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) is a blood-borne and sexually transmitted disease. AIDS weakens the body's immune system, which gives opportunity to infections and diseases that in ordinary circumstances would not be life-threatening (Foster 1). This is called opportunistic infection, and the most common is preumocystic carinin pneumonia (PCP), a lung infection that was almost...