National Association For People With Aids example essay topic

AIDS is a serious (often fatal) disease of the immune system transmitted through blood products especially by sexual contact or contaminated needles. It is the most serious outcome of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection. People with AIDS often suffer lung, brain, eye and other organ disease along with debilitating weight loss, diarrhea, candidacies, dementia, toxoplasmosis and a type of cancer called Kaposi's Sarcoma, and makes the immune system weak and therefore less able to fight certain infections and diseases. (web) AIDS is currently incurable, and is spread through the transfer of bodily fluids. According to WHO estimates, by end-1996, nearly 30 million people - including over 2.5 million children - had been infected with HIV since the start of the pandemic. Every day, more than 7000 adults and 500 babies are infected. More than 8 million people have developed AIDS.

Of the 26.8 million adults with HIV infection - the global estimate in end-1996 - 14 million were in Sub-Saharan Africa and more than 3.5 million in Asia. Our region, that is South-East Asia, is likely to suffer the brunt of the pandemic - being home to over half the world's population. Moreover, HIV / AIDS is now present in every continent and in every region of the world. (web) Founded in 1983, The National Association of People with AIDS advocates on behalf of all people living with HIV and AIDS in order to end the human suffering caused by HIV / AIDS. They are the oldest national AIDS organization in the United States and the oldest national network of people living with HIV / AIDS in the world.

Over 80% of their staff are people of color, and women living with HIV hold senior staff positions at NAPWA. The majority of their staff members are people living with HIV. Their Board of Directors is equally diverse, providing representation of the many communities impacted by the epidemic. The vast majority of Board Members are also HIV positive. These dedicated and hard working people make NAPWA unique among national AIDS organizations. They offer many programs, including important conferences and training sessions throughout the year, including the Leadership Training Institute, Helping Communities Build Leadership, the Ryan White National Youth Conference on HIV and AIDS, and Staying Alive, NAPWA's national conference for people living with AIDS and HIV.

The target population for this group is anybody with AIDS, but also those at risk. Like stated before, nearly 30 million people, including over 2.5 million children had been infected with HIV since the start of the pandemic. More than 8 million people have developed AIDS, and that was back in 1996, and it shows no signs of slowing. This organization has created a multi-national base for people with AIDS, striving to make their lives easier. They have an in-depth website, that has many upon many links to other related websites, and also events and occasions that they are either hosting or involved with.

They have a membership program for people that put you onto their mailing list for magazines and notices for upcoming events. I couldn't find anything concrete about their success but the elaboration of their website and all of their sponsors make it hard to believe that they are not doing a good part of helping the community. There are many prevalent social work values in this field of study, but a couple that stick out are patience and empathy. People are going to be coming to you in this line of work depressed, sad, maybe even angry or hurt that this has happened to them. You have to be able to keep your cool to help them keep theirs.

Patience is going to play a major part in whether you gain the person's trust or not which is essential in helping them. Next, was empathy. To try to understand as much as you can about having AIDS without actually having it you have to be empathetic. You have to understand that their lives have been flipped upside-down and that they sometimes just need someone to talk to.

If you " re not empathetic than you " ll never understand fully what the person is trying to tell you or is going through. The special populations in this subject are touched on very effectively. Like I stated before, in this club over 80% of their staff are people of color, and women living with HIV hold senior staff positions. The majority of their staff members are people living with HIV, and are also HIV positive. I personally didn't see any changes that could be made to this organization. They have covered a lot of their bases and they are a very organized group of people, and also very dedicated.

I believe that the only thing that they could do is start to advertise more to get their company out there to better help the community. Overall, I actually learned quite a bit from this research. I never thought that AIDS was such an epidemic in the world today. I knew that it was a problem but I never knew the numbers of people affect everyday was so high. Also, during research before deciding on The National Association for People With AIDS, I found out that there are a ton of groups out there dedicated to helping people with the depressing disease.

AIDS is untreatable, but there are many ways that I found out that you can go on living your life while living with this disease. Overall, I was quite impressed with the effort put forth by people to try to help people Overall, I was quite impressed with the effort put forth by people to try to help people with AIDS, and I see no reason why in the future, with all of this effort that we can't do something about it.