Infectious Disease
There is one sexually transmitted disease that everyone is afraid of and that is HIV or AIDS. It has been plaguing this country for years and other parts of the world for even longer. Scientist believes that the HIV virus came from a chimpanzee from Western Africa. They think the virus most likely jumped to humans when humans hunted these chimpanzees for meat and came into contacted with their infected blood (What is HIV / AIDS?, 2012) . After years the virus spread and infected multiple parts of African and then spread to other parts of the world.
HIV stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus. This virus only affects human beings and what it does is weakens the immune system by destroying important cells. The cells it attacks are the T-cells or CD4 cells (What is HIV / AIDS?, 2012) . The human body has these cells to fight infections and disease. Therefore when it encounters the HIV virus the T-cells try to attack it but instead the HIV virus ends up invading those cells and uses them to make more copies of itself. Then when it is done it destroys them (What is HIV / AIDS?, 2012) . This process does not happen overnight. The HIV virus can lay dormant for a long period of time before an individual might know that they have contracted it.
Even when HIV is dormant it can still be spread to other human beings because HIV lives in semen, vaginal fluids, blood, and breast milk (Krantzler, PhD, MPH, 2007). There are specific ways one can contract the HIV virus. The most common way is by having vaginal, anal, or oral sex with someone who has HIV. Other ways one could contract the HIV virus are by sharing needles with infected people or being exposed to infected blood (Hiatt, Clark, & Nelson, 2010) . In addition if a mother has HIV and chooses to breast feed her child she can also expose her child to
