This very name HIV is not a disease but a virus. A virus that works to form a lot of sickness/illness to mankind.
It is a virus that lets you to have a lose motion, cough, stress, headache etc. for more than an average time. And when someone had it for a long time they can check out the virus status in the body. The culprit that makes you sick has a name in it.
That name is HIV, Human Immunodeficiency Virus. And we need not be upset with that name. It’s just a virus and can be control it.
And when it is not control then this will lead to AIDS, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome a kind of cancer where treatment is in vain. But when this virus is still young we can control the replication of that very virus, through ART, Anti Retroviral Therapy.
What it does is that this therapy lets the virus reduce its replication of the virus in the body. When this therapy is not done properly then the viral will increase its replication.
Which means that when a single virus enters the body then within a short period of time it will become two in number, and then this two virus will form four in number then to eight and so on. So if this virus in the body is too much then the body mechanism will reduce its stability, all the cells that are fighting for the alien virus will also not be able to fight with it.
So when this HIV virus takes over our body then you’ll become weak and are more prone to lot of sickness like malaria, diarrhoea, coughing, etc. So not to take over by this HIV virus you need to have ART, Anti Retroviral Therapy. In this way the viral count will not increase, it’ll stay constant if taken regularly.
And those who have had this virus need not worry because it is just a virus and not a disease. There are a lot of place you can go for therapy for that. If you don’t want to go to hospitals there are many NGO’s like MNP+ which is form and for the people living with HIV/AIDS.
There is nothing to feel shy of this HIV status. It is just a virus of any kind of disease. There are also other deadly or contagious disease than this HIV virus for this virus is not air borne.
This disease is spread through blood, which means when people had unprotected sex with infected person and with many partners. Not only this it can spread through sharing of needle/syringes also.
When the syringes are share among the infected person, it can also infect with HIV virus. So it needs to take care of what we do with our life. Almost all the NGO’s and hospitals supply condoms/syringes to people who use drugs as well as who had lots of sex partners. You need not feel awkward while asking for condoms/syringes because it is for ours to have this privilege.
Even though infected with HIV virus still we can share everything like toilet, utensil, towel, soap etc. It doesn’t spread with this sharing. We need to live in a positive way; we don’t have to cast out people who are infected. In fact we need to take care more of them.
What we need is proper knowledge and information that’s all. Without proper knowledge and information all things can go the other way.
Here is a good example, did Lady Diana and Mother Teresa ever got infected by HIV virus by interacting with those infected persons? The answer is No. They didn’t. You know why? Because it does not got infected by physical contact, sweat and all. What we need is just the will to go on living a better life.
A positive mental attitude and positive living is necessary for all the people who are infected as well as who are not. Every diseases can lead one's to death and the same is also HIV virus. Mankind are bound to meet death one day or the other whether one got disease or not.
So we need not think about death, because if we think about it then death will come sooner then expected. So if we want to led a life of happiness then we need to think of happiness and helping others when they are down to lift them up and to make a better world to live.
So in order not to get all this disease like HIV and the likes we need to control the habit of taking heroin, nicotine, alcohol and abstain from risk behaviour etc.
What we need is more exercise such as walking, jogging etc and doing social work. Staying with the society is the best way to control the unwanted disease from entering our lives.
If we are alone then the chance of getting unwanted disease is more, because you don’t have the right information and knowledge, so when you do your way it will lead to getting infected by unwanted disease.
Some of the goals to help the infected person is to seek clinical help, it improve the quality of living, it prolong the life of infected person. It also helps in reducing the viral load and helps in delaying/preventing the progression of the disease.
And by immunologic, it helps to reconstruct the immune system. So get all this privilege by going to hospitals or NGO’s or through friends. While helping an infected person we need to watch our words/actions. We need to choose careful words.
We must not be cruel with words which may wreck the life of infected person. We must use sweet words so that not to instill hate among us, through brutal words can leads to a stage of killing each other also, must use gracious word to smoothen their way in living with the society.
Time after time we need to give moral support to lessen their stress, which may also leads to heal and have blessing through it. In order to understand with each other, the youth in the locality/village had a great responsibility in it. Youth must understand what HIV is all about.
If the youth doesn’t understand or have the idea of it, then the youth can have an awareness camp to deal with it.
And to the youth of this land I pray my plea is to help the mass of infected people who needs our encouragement and support so that they can live a life of a normal person.
Through God nothing is impossible to heal the wound as it is says in Deu. 33:39.
* W Zingkhai wrote this article for The Sangai Express .
This article was webcasted on 1st June 2007.
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