What is the scope of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States and the world?
An epidemic in the medical aspect is the appearance of a serious, often fatal disease in numbers much greater than normal. Socially, an epidemic is an event that disrupts the life of a community and causes unpredictability, anxiety, and flight. In the year 1981, the epidemic of acquired immune deficiency syndrome was recognized in the United States.
About forty-five thousand cases of HIV were reported in 1991. Five thousand new cases of acquired immune deficiency syndrome were reported to the Centers for Disease Control that brought the cumulative total of cases in the United States to about two lakhs. Sixty-five percent of people died due to the disease according to the reports of the Centers for Disease Control in 1992. It is estimated that approximately one million people are currently infected with the human immunodeficiency virus. The numbers express the first and most obvious impact of the HIV or AIDS epidemic on American society. Behind the epidemiologic reports and the statistical estimates lies the social disruption of the epidemic. The epidemic situation destroyed life and changed the lives of many other people who were touched by the disease.
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