HIV/AIDS has seen an increase this year in our country. Africa has recently seen a decrease in HIV/AIDS infections, and they are considered the capital of sorts for the most HIV/AIDS infections, beating out the United States.

Recently, according to Columbia Daily Tribune, " Mid-Missouri has seen an 18 percent rise in people seeking treatment for AIDS and HIV this year, according to the area group that handles case management for patients."

"The reason for the increase is widespread testing by local agencies and clinics, casual attitude among young people, and the perception that HIV is a treatable condition because of medical advances", said the Tribune. Practicing safe sex is one of the sure ways to prevent the disease from increasing even more in our country.

This article is a constant reminder that "Comprehensive Sex Education" is needed in our country. Many young adults lack the information about sex and the importance of using the resources created to prevent the disease from spreading.

EXCERPTS FROM ARTICLE: MISSOURI (COLUMBIA DAILY TRIBUNE):

Cale Mitchell, executive director of RAIN, which manages the casework for hundreds of Mid-Missouri HIV and AIDS patients, said his group added 58 clients in the 12-month period that ended in May. These people have either tested positive in that time or have just begun seeking services. And last week, he said, RAIN enrolled a 16-year-old girl — the youngest HIV-positive client the agency has ever had.

Mitchell said his organization has made a concerted effort to offer tests at gatherings of college students and at events such as Pridefest and Earth Day. As a result, RAIN administered 15 percent more HIV tests in 2008 than in years past, discovering people who had no idea they had the disease. This testing push is in keeping with a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendation to make the HIV test similar to a cholesterol test, where all adults are tested regardless of risk factors.

But clinicians are also uncovering a disturbingly lax attitude about sex among young people. Marlin Martin of the AIDS Project of the Ozarks in Springfield said his area registered 54 “new positives” last year, about 20 more than would have been diagnosed 10 years ago. Young people, he said, are the disease’s primary growth sector.

“Overwhelmingly, we’re seeing younger individuals. I personally gave positive tests to 16- and 17 year-olds, where previously our median age was late 20s and early 30s,” he said. Martin said he is befuddled when he hears teens’ narrow and naïve concept of sex.

“Yesterday, I did a risk assessment with an 18-year-old who told me that he hadn’t had any sex partners in the past six months,” he said Thursday. “So I’m asking him why he wanted to come in and get tested, and” it turns out “he has had oral sex with probably in the neighborhood of 50 individuals. But he didn’t consider oral sex to be sex at all.” Such an attitude extends to girls as young as 13 who engage in oral or anal sex — often without protection — as a way of “saving themselves” for marriage. As a result, STDs such as gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis are on the rise.

“For 20 years we didn’t have one case of primary syphilis in the state of Missouri,” Martin said. “Here at our agency we diagnosed 15 in the month of May.” In some ways, the AIDS-awareness effort is a victim of its own success. Images of the dying no longer inspire music or films. A recent nine-nation survey found that 40 percent of those surveyed didn’t even consider the disease fatal and that young people were most likely to be unafraid of the disease.

“We don’t see the same imagery that we did in the ’80s,” Mitchell said. “You have a whole generation that missed out on seeing those images of people wasting away and dying. … All they see is that there are ads in national magazines for HIV medication that show somebody climbing the side of a mountain or whitewater rafting and living a normal, healthy life because they take one pill a day.”

William Salzer, a University Hospital infectious disease physician who treats AIDS patients, says the average life expectancy has grown to 26 years from the time HIV is contracted. “You can’t cure it, but you can manage it,” he said. “In fact, we see more people who have HIV die of something other than HIV; they’re having heart attacks, high blood pressure, malignancies and other things.” Martin and Salzer each said they’ve encountered patients who don’t fear the disease.

“I’m told on a regular basis, ‘If you’re gay or bisexual, you’re probably going to get it anyway,’ ” Martin said. “ ‘So why don’t I get it over with so I don’t have to worry about it anymore?’ ”