-Gro H. Brundtland

Without education being a part of our lives it is virtually impossible to sustain a healthy lifestyle. Education guides us in the right direction in life. Unfortunately, in Africa the lack of education equals the lack of knowledge concerning illnesses and different diseases. HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis (TB),are some of the most deadly diseases in all of Africa.

HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of deaths in Africa. AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Caused by HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus, AIDS is a very fatal disease. HIV destroys a person's defense system, which, when working properly, fights infection. A person with HIV eventually loses the ability to fight illnesses and their body gets weaker until death. AIDS is the final stage of HIV infection. A person is diagnosed with AIDS when it is found that they have an opportunistic infection (An infection caused by a microorganism that under normal conditions would not bring about disease. Opportunistic infections occur when the body's immune system is weakened by disease or malnutrition). Imagine your life this way. You get up early in the morning with you four children and eat breakfast. One of your children is bound to die in infancy. Your husband works 300 miles away, comes home three times a year and sleeps around in between. You gamble with your life when you engage in every act of sexual intercourse. You go to work every morning passing a house where a teen lives alone trying to take care of younger siblings with no source of income. At a near by home, a wife was considered a whore because she asked her husband to use a condom, beaten ridiculously and dumped into the streets. Just around the corner lies a man very ill without access to a doctor, medication, food, or a kind word. You eat with the rest of the people you work with and just about every third one is ill. You whisper about a friend that admitted to having HIV/AIDS and whose neighbors threw rocks at her. Your free time is occupied by funerals every Saturday. You go to bed wondering if adults your age are going to make it into their 40's. You, your neighbors, and your political leaders act as if nothing is happening. Across Africa this nightmare is real. There are more than 42 million people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide. Of this number 68 percent (about 28.5 million) of them are in Africa. The majority of adult populations with HIV/AIDS are women. Ten people are infected with the HIV virus every minute and about 6,000 people all across Africa die each day from this stalking disease. This number is higher than the combined number of deaths caused by wars and floods. There are many ways to prevent HIV/AIDS. Africa must first be educated more about HIV/AIDS. I have read that many African men infected with HIV or AIDS believe that if they have sex with a virgin, they will rid themselves of the virus. Is this a widespread belief in Africa? African must be educated more. Condoms also play a key role in preventing HIV infection around the world. In Sub-Saharan Africa, most countries have seen an increase in condom use in recent years. Safe sex is great, but better sex is NO SEX...There is no cure for HIV/AIDS.

Malaria is also one of Africa's deadly diseases. Malaria is a potentially fatal blood disease caused by a parasite that is transmitted to human and animal hosts by the Anopheles mosquito. The human parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, is dangerous not only because it digests the red blood cell's hemoglobin, but also because it changes the adhesive properties of the cell it inhabits. This change in turn causes the cell to stick to the walls of blood vessels. It becomes especially dangerous when the infected blood cells stick to the capillaries in the brain, obstructing blood flow, a condition called cerebral malaria. Malaria in humans is caused by a protozoon of the genus Plasmodium and the four subspecies, falciparum, vivax, malariae, and ovale. The species that causes the greatest illness and death in Africa is P. falciparum. Malaria take lives of over one million people annually, most of which are children under the age of 5, and approximately 90 percent of people that live in Africa. Malaria is responsible for one out of every four childhood deaths in Africa. the only preventive methods that can be used in Africa is just to try to wear clothing that covers most of their body. There are "prophylactic" malaria medications that are in the U.S. that makes this disease seem to be nothing more than having a common cold. Unfortunately, Africa is not provided with medication that can decrease their risk of being infected with this fatal disease.

Tuberculosis is another devastating illness that takes the lives of innocent individuals in Africa each year. Tuberculosis is a deadly infectious disease caused by mycobacteria (Mycobacterium is a genus of Actinobacteria, given its own family, the Mycobacteriaceae. The genus includes pathogens known to cause serious diseases in mammals, including tuberculosis and leprosy). Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs, but it can also attack other major organs. Tuberculosis (similar to meningococcal meningitis) is spread through the air, when people would have the disease, cough, sneeze, or spit. Because parts of Africa are dealing poverty it is much more likely to come in contact with Tuberculosis. Tuberculosis lives in areas that are overcrowded and poverty such as Africa, where the conditions are ideal for transmitting the disease to others. People dying of TB are literally ‘consumed’ by the disease, which is why it was known as ‘consumption’ in the past. Untreated, most people with TB become feverish, exhausted, and emaciated to near skeletons; as their lungs are destroyed; those with TB die of asphyxiation, or virtually drown in their own blood. Africa, home to 11% of the world's population, carries 29% of the global burden of tuberculosis cases and 34% of related deaths, and the challenges of controlling the disease in the region have never been greater. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the average incidence of tuberculosis in African countries more than doubled between 1990 and 2005, from 149 to 343 per 100,000 populations. In 1990, two African countries, Mali and Togo, had an incidence greater than 300 per 100,000. By 2005, 25 countries had reached that level, and 8 of them had an incidence at least twice that high. The unprecedented growth of the tuberculosis epidemic in Africa is attributable to several factors, the most important being the HIV epidemic. Although HIV is Africa's leading cause of death, tuberculosis is the most common coexisting condition in people who die from AIDS. Autopsy studies show that 30 to 40% of HIV-infected adults die from tuberculosis. Among HIV-infected children, tuberculosis accounts for up to one in five of all deaths. Tuberculosis prevention and control takes two parallel approaches. In the first, people with TB and their contacts are identified and then treated. Identification of infections often involves testing high-risk groups for TB. In the second approach, children are vaccinated to protect them from TB.Treatment for TB uses antibiotics to kill the bacteria. The two antibiotics most commonly used are rifampicin and isoniazid. However, instead of the short course of antibiotics typically used to cure other bacterial infections, TB requires much longer periods of treatment (around 6 to 12 months) to entirely eliminate mycobacteria from the body. This is another disease that canbe easily treated inthe United States whereas in Africa it is very hard to get close to these tretments.

Education is a must to survive in this world. I know everyone has heard this old saying, "what he don't know won't hurt him", well that is not true. In Africa there are millions of people that are not educated about what is really going on between all of these disease epidemics and it is indeed hurting them. People are dying everyday. How could Africa possibly live a sustainable lifestyle if they are not educated??

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