More Diseases to Fear

You may have read in today's Muskogee Phoenix that autism, asthma and obesity are on the rise among children in the United States. The rise in autism has prompted the Oklahoma State Department of Education to require autism training for educators. School lunch programs have already revised their menus to more health conscious choices for students. Non-smoking education programs are regularly put into public view, for example through the Muskogee County Health Department and Students Working Against Tobacco.

Teachers have also been trained in bloodborne pathogens through state mandate for several years now and rightly so. The U.S. Center for Disease Control released data indicating that new cases of HIV are substantially higher than previously projected. The old estimate was 40,000, but since data has been kept better than it was before, the new figure is actually closer to 56,000. The good news is that even at the higher rate, new cases remain stable.

Still, young people under 25 account for the majority of the new cases. Among those, African Americans have a seven times higher chance of being infected with HIV, especially black women. These are infections per year, not per decade. The percentage also remains high for gay and bisexual men, but due to better education among some groups, for instance intravenous drug users, the percentage of HIV infections has actually dropped.

Although the number seems small in comparison to the whole population, if your child were one of the infected, it would affect your whole world. HIV is not the death sentence today that it used to be thanks to better education and improved drugs to combat the disease. That improvement also comes thanks in part to the courageous people infected with the disease who were valiant enough to speak out and educate others.

The 17th Annual Conference on Aids began yesterday in Mexico City. Education is our best bet in preventing these diseases from affecting our loved ones. Learn more about autism, asthma, teen obesity, and sexually transmitted diseases. Public education and assistance are in place, but do little good if the individual does not take advantage of the information. As parents, we should educate ourselves so that we can buffer our children against these diseases as much as is humanly possible.