I reviewed the slides for this week’s assignment and found something very intriguing. I believe it was about those who receive blood, 1 in 150,000 will receive an infected unit (Douglass, slide 7). I had to read that a few times to believe it. In this country, you have a 1 out of 150,000 chance that you could receive an infected portion of blood. The odds seem terribly likely. When I think of how much blood people are pumped with from car accidents or surgeries every day from all over the country, it scares me that our supply is not cleaner. With the amount of science we have at our fingertips, I would think our blood supply would be nearly perfect. I thought they would have better odds than this.
I found a story online that tied in with our question of the week, and my “did you know” column about students.
The article followed a seven year old student whom attended an elementary school in Yugoslavia. This boy was HIV positive. The article followed his social environment and how he was shunned from not only other children, but more specifically, other children’s parents.
I tried to write responses to a few students QOTW postings, but this excerpt clearly says it better than I could.
“Besides the efforts of the school faculty as well as the representatives of the Ministry of Education and health institutions, it was not possible to prevent the exclusion of the HIV student forced by the parents of his peers. Even with good basic knowledge of HIV/AIDS among the parents, irrational fear prevailed. This case implies that beside the fact that the general public is well informed of HIV/AIDS and of the willingness of the public and government institutions to help individual cases, unsatisfied awareness of this problem is the important determinant of the behavior of social groups” (Gateway, 2000)*
* http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/MeetingAbstracts/ma?f=102238531.html
Douglass, Sharon. (2009). HIV: A Human Concern. HSC 3593, University of Central Florida, Orlando.
This post is inregards to your "Blood is in High Demand." Before I deployed overseas I was given a series of vaccinations for Anthrax. After I finished my term of service I found a donation site where I could donate my antrax antibodies for help make more for other troops going oversea (I got paid for it too though lol). This was the first time I had ever been tested for HIV. Only after passing a physical and HIV test was I allowed to donate. This was a donor site and before each and every time I donated there was a screening. They ask you questions that bascially give a risk assessment for HIV or any other tranmitable diseases. I began to think, well if I did get HIV and didnt know it after the intial HIV test I could potentialy ruin alot of lives. I was not really at high risk of getting HIV but what about someone else? Without knowing they had HIV and passing the screening before a donation could be a catastrophe. I am not sure if secondary tests are done to check each sample. Just some thoughts I had a few years ago that I could share.
ReplyDeleteIt is really sad that kids are treated differently when they are HIV positive. I feel like these kids would develop an inferiority complex about themselves and live a 'not happy' life because of the way people think in the society.
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