Infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) creates acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), which attacks the cells of the immune system, and damages or destroys their function. The virus is spread through immediate contact with an infected mucosal membrane or bodily fluids such as blood, semen, and breast milk.
After an introductory frequently asymptomatic stage, skin predicaments and upper respiratory tract infections occur, and patients start to lose weight. Persistent diarrhea, chronic fever, fungal or bacterial contaminations, and tuberculosis may follow. As the infection advances, the immune system degenerates, gradually losing its strength to fight other infections and diseases, and eventually leading to immune deficiency. Immunodeficiency individuals are prone to opportunistic infections and tumors. There is no antidote or vaccine currently ready, but the availability of active antiretroviral treatment has radically lowered mortality and prolonged survival times of HIV-infected individuals in high-income nations. However, antiretroviral medications are usually costly, and access to diagnostic tests and treatments in low- to middle-income class families and third world countries has been inadequate. Over the preceding decade, competition from universal pharmaceutical corporations has dramatically reduced the cost of antiretroviral, although brand-new generation medications continue prohibitively pricey. Most children get HIV through perinatal transmission through pregnancy, childbirth, or while breastfeeding. Prevention programs can decrease the risk of transmission from 30-40% down to less than 5%. Improved admittance to these programs will lead to the higher health of HIV-positive expecting women and lowering numbers of newborns infected.
Introduction
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, of all ethnic groups in the United States, African Americans have faced the most challenges and largest burden by the HIV/AIDS epidemic since 1981 (CDC, 2016). Distinguished with various races and ethnicities, African Americans serve a more significant amount of new HIV diagnoses, those existing with HIV, and those ever decided to have AIDS. In 2014, it was reported that 44% (19,540) of newly diagnosed HIV cases were published in the United States were among African Americans, who constitute of 12% of the US population (CDC, 2016). During this same year, it is expected that presently diagnosed HIV cases among African American women represented 26% (5,128) and 73% (14,305) was that of African American men (CDC, 2016). Between 2005 and 2014, the CDC (2016) recorded that the quantity of new HIV diagnoses among African American women dropped 42%. However, it is still remarkably compared with women of diverse races/ethnicities.
As of the previous rate of HIV infection among African American women has transformed into an undeniably developing epidemic. Among African American women the fundamental transmission rate is related to having unprotected sexual relations with their male counterparts of the corresponding ethnic group (Avert, 2016). Although there have been multiplied intervention plans executed throughout the United States, the urgent need for an active womens intervention program must be performed in America. By using the Health Belief Model to devise an intervention plan will be profitable to African American woman living with HIV/AIDS.
Problem Statement
It is necessary for healthcare specialists, especially advanced nurses and public health specialists in distinguishing the determinants that add to and are related with taking part in high-risk sexual relations for African American women of a feeble to average financial status living in the United States; so they can implement programs that can reduce the vulnerabilities of HIV infections within this population, but most importantly design programs that will educate this population of how to live with their diagnosis without the feeling of being segregated against.
Background
Customarily, women have been impacted by HIV/AIDS since the commencement of the plague. Present, women represent 1 in 5 (20%) new HIV infections in the U.S (FTCA Health Center, 2016). Women of color, especially African American women, have been especially hard hit and articulate to the lions portion of women living with the sickness and women newly contaminated. As with people with HIV by and large, most women with HIV are not in universal care and just a quarter are virally subdued (FTCA Health Center, 2016). Women with and at risk for HIV encounter a few obstacles to getting the services and information they need, including financial and social barriers, for instance, poverty, social inequalities, and sexual savagery, and women may put the requirements of their families superior their own.
What is more, women additionally encounter peculiar clinical side outcomes and complications because of HIV disease. Notwithstanding this influence, there are encouraging new symptoms, with information showing that HIV infections are immediately falling among women, including among African American, even though they keep on growing among homosexual men(FTCA Health Center, 2016). The leading cause of the plagues outcome on women in the U.S., particularly African American women, stays crucial to ensuring that these empowering models progress.
According to the Florida Department of Health in 2013, 901 African American women account for new HIV cases. As of January 31, 2014, Miami-Dade County ranks number 1 in the state of Florida for new HIV cases and AIDS cases. 27,035 people are living with HIV/AIDS in Miami-Dade County (Florida Department of Health, 2013)
Women are doomed to be infected with HIV through heterosexual (84% of new infections in 2010), traced by immersion drug use (16%). This model is constant crosswise over racial and ethnic groups, albeit heterosexual transmission represents a more remarkable offer of new HIV epidemics among African American women and Latinas (87% and 86%, separately) compared with white women (76%) (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2016).
Health Promotion- Advanced Practice
