Essay on Health Care Policy

Currently, HIV infection among humans around the world is now considered as a pandemic. As of late, the United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS otherwise known as UNAIDS, together with the World Health Organization (WHO) was able to project that AIDS has claimed the lives of approximately 25 million people around the world since December 1, 1981.

This current standing puts AIDS making it one of the most destructive pandemics that was ever recorded. Prior to 2006, the pandemic has already claimed approximately 2.4–3.3 million lives. Twenty percent of which is more than 570,000 were children. It has been projected by leading organizations that 0.6% of the total population of the world is HIV positive.

Based on projections, it has been estimated that approximately 1/3 of these deaths would be happening in sub-Saharan Africa which would potentially decrease economic growth and dramatically increase poverty. In addition to recent studies and projections, AIDS could potentially communicate a disease to more than 90 million people in Africa alone that can result in orphans going up to 18 million.

There have staunch efforts in order to curb this disease. Several programs such as Information dissemination, legislation focused on curbing the sources of AIDS/HIVS in order to further prevent the spread of disease, research and development of potential cures and vaccinations, health improvement initiatives, and many other programs have been instituted as a means to cut the pandemic from its infectious rampage (UNAIDS, 2006).

Governments around the world are aware that this pandemic is no longer an infection that they can simply ignore and would not hit their own countries. Because of this they have started to institute within their area of responsibility various governmental programs and policies that would be useful in stopping this pandemic from spreading in their country (Greener, 2002).

This paper aims to present a comprehensive plan of action on creating a governmental policy that aims to curb the spread of HIV or otherwise known as AIDS on the nationwide scale.

The objective of this paper is to present how the government and the people can utilize preventive measures by the means of a nationwide policy in order to make aware, prevent and alleviate HIV/AIDS infection and lower the impact of the disease on children, young people, adolescents and women (“Healthy People 2010,” 2007).

Essentially, the policy against AIDS that would be adopted should focus on several aspects such as increasing awareness and effectiveness of a nation’s response towards the disease. This can be achieved by providing support and encouraging full participation directed towards the people that are afflicted by the disease.

Under this proposed policy there is potentially more that can be achieved by being able to increase the advocacy on the causes and effects AIDS/HIV particularly to the group that would be most affected by the disease.

The proposed policy would also lead to the development and further improvement of instituted policies to better supplement each other and become more effective.

Secondly, the proposed policies should be able to usher in opportunities or added venues for counseling in order to assist in behavioral change as an onset of HIV/AIDS infection and affliction. This will be through allocation of more funds in order to provide efficient reproductive healthcare and support.

The instituted policy should also provide venues for increased participation in coordination and development of initiatives that focus on alleviating sources of AIDS/HIV infection such as preventing further trafficking of women and children.

This policy also involves provision of information that can lead to financial empowerment and therefore, reduce people who are more vulnerable. This can also be provided through the development of community based organizations that educate people on the scourge. These organizations can then be able to facilitate in the sharing of experiences and resources and prevent stigmatization (UNAIDS, 2006).

With the ensuing implementation of this policy, new infections can be prevented by arranging seminars and giving information about the disease. This will prevent mother to child transmission through blood screening and educating mothers on the dangers of breastfeeding.

The policy will also lead to increased support for children and families living with the disease. More care and support will also be given to people especially children made vulnerable by the disease.

In order to implement an effective AIDS/HIV governmental policy, several elements have to be taken into careful consideration, acted upon in a staggered and balance manner, and evaluated periodically for effective monitoring and progression reports.

The succeeding text will focus on the proposed elements of the policy against AIDS/HIV that will be explained comprehensively in the succeeding text. The first part of the initiative is focused on ensuring proper accordance to human rights.

It is important that human rights among HIV victims and potential HIV carriers are maintained and still being given to them. It is important that human rights are promoted among each other, it is protected and respected. In addition, it is important that venues and measures are taken in order to ensure these rights and to decrease discrimination and combat stigma towards AIDS victims.

Being able to prevent such alienation can promote harmoniously living between victims and their direct/indirect contacts (families, nurses, etc.) which would usher in potentially better medical and psychological assistance. This can actually support these victims and their families and lessen the amount of stress currently being carried by the victim and their families.

In addition, policies grounded on discrimination and alienation of victims would only yield further unnecessary fear within the populace and would put much undue burden on the AIDS/HIV victims (Greener, 2002). This would also yield to potentially unnecessary programs and initiatives that could have been avoided if the current stigma and views towards AIDS/HIV was removed.

In addition, it is important to create a policy that would institute gender equality and address current gender norms within a community that hampers and restricts the full implementation of gender equality.

This policy would be highly effective if there is full support coming from men in all the facets of the program. By being able to imbibe gender equality, abuse and eventually HIV transmission would lessen with the community.

The second item is to create proactive policies in order to continually institute or imbibe HIV/AIDS prevention ideologies and principles into leaders from all areas within society. This includes government officials, community leaders, NGO leaders, leaders of faith-based organizations, educational leaders, the media, and even trade unions (Xuequan, 2006).

This can be achieved by instituting educational and advocacy methods such as seminars, treaties and organizational commitments towards the alleviation of HIV among their communities.

By being able to create a sense of responsibility among leaders within these communities, there is a point of delineation wherein the burden of preventing HIV is decentralized from the government alone to include smaller organizations within the community.