A very helpful class

It has been a great experience throughout the semester as I went through assignments, modules, quizzes and more. I learned a lot more than I had originally thought. It opened my eyes in a lot of ways and I can now look at HIV with a much different perspective. I was never really judgmental but there was always a subconscious fear in my mind when I met HIV positive patients at work. Since I have done several questions of the week where I had to put myself in a situation and think about it, I will be a lot prepared if anything like that ever happened.

I keep a box of gloves in my car just in case I have help someone in the most random place. I have told several of my friends and my parents to do the same. I have mentioned before that it is so amazing that I have been able to talk to my family openly about HIV. I went to get myself tested for HIV because of this class. I would have never done it otherwise. Even when I knew that it was going to be negative, some of the questions from the counselor were mind opening. If I had gone to get tested without this class and told my parents, they would have most definitely not taken it the right way.

I want to thank Linda and Teach for such a great class and I hope that I will continue to learn more about HIV and educate people around me.

Did You Know...........

Florida stands first in the entire nation in pediatric AIDS cases and second in total pediatric HIV cases.
96% of the babies with HIV are infected perinatally.
There is an organization called the 'Perinatal HIV Prevention Community' that educates the health care providers on HIV laws, how pregnancies are reported and how this is a very important issue in the current society.

Source:
http://www.usfcenter.org/Perinatal/

Hello everyone,

It is almost the end of the semester and it feels like it went by so fast. I learnt more and more about HIV as weeks went by and I realized how much I did not know about this topic. I was inspired to take this class because I had thought that I would know a lot of HIV and it would help me educate more people around me including my family and friends. I cannot believe that by taking this class how much my family has opened up on this topic. My dad was started a conversation on HIV about it just a few days ago and I was really surprised. But I was so happy that they are thinking about it with their minds open.

Every question of the week is challenging and makes me think about the situation for the longest time. This week's question was a really nice one because education and awareness are the most important thing according to me. I do not how much in statistics but it would definitely help a lot in the preventing to spread this disease. Younger people have a tendency to think that they are not prone to HIV risk. But they are so wrong because we learnt in one of the very first assignments that it does not discriminate. Anyone can get it. I have thought that the next time I go home to India, I am going to find an organization that works for HIV and get involved in education.

Did You Know..........
Pregnancy and labor and delivery account for about 20% of the risk of transmission of HIV from mother to child. Just labor and delivery counts for 15% of the risk for perinatal transmission.

There is a greater risk of transmission during longer labor periods than short labors.

Transmission risk can be reduced by as much as 50% in a caesarean section than a normal delivery.

Source:
http://pepcourse.co.za/pdf/3_Unit33_HIVInLabourAndDelivery.pdf

Blog #10

I am finally so relieved after 3 exams between last and this week and so happy that the weather is finally getting so much better. The question of the week was a really interesting one. I really think that patients with disorders should volunteer in trials for medications. That would give the researchers so much better results. Also, I hear my teachers talking about testing on mice - especially for neurological research because they are cheaper than any other animals. I think that is very unethical to test animals for cosmetics. That is extremely selfish of human beings to do that. Human beings do a lot of unfair things to animals thinking that they have control over everything.

I was working on Sunday and an incident happened that made me think about this class - more about HIV. I went to the drive-thru to wait on a customer and asked them if they wanted to pick up or drop off a prescription. There was a young man and a woman sitting next to him in the passenger seat. The man asked me to get them the 'morning after' pill. I asked him to show me some kind of identification and he gave me a nasty look. He looked old enough but I still have to ask. I told him the price and sold it to him and he drove away without saying a 'thank you' or anything. This happens all the time.

Sometimes I go to work 2 days after our order comes in and all of the 'Plan B' pills are gone; especially after a long weekend. It is so easy to get them and with the new generic, the prices have gone down too. Instead of making it harder, it is going the opposite way. I think that this encourages people to have unprotected sex and it is awful.

Did You Know............

'Helping Hospitals Eliminate Perinatal HIV Transmission' or HRET is an organization that works to reduce the trasmission of HIV from mother to child.
Perinatal HIV trasmission counts for 91% of AIDS children.

Source:
http://www.aone.org/hret/programs/hivtransm.html