The spread of HIV/AIDS has affected millions of people worldwide; AIDS is considered a pandemic. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that in 2016 there were 36.7 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS, with 1.8 million new HIV infections per year and 1 million deaths due to AIDS. Misconceptions about HIV and AIDS arise from several different sources, from simple ignorance and misunderstandings about scientific knowledge regarding HIV infections and the cause of AIDS to misinformation propagated by individuals and groups with ideological stances that deny a causative relationship between HIV infection and the development of AIDS. Below is a list and explanations of some common misconceptions and their rebuttals.
Meningococcal disease or meningitis describes infections caused by the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis. It has a high mortality rate if untreated but is vaccine-preventable. While best known as a cause of meningitis, it can also result in sepsis, which is an even more damaging and dangerous condition. Meningitis and meningococcemia are major causes of illness, death, and disability in both developed and under-developed countries.
HIV/AIDS in India is an epidemic. The National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) estimated that 2.14 million people lived with HIV/AIDS in India in 2017. Despite being home to the world's third-largest population of persons with HIV/AIDS, the AIDS prevalence rate in India is lower than that of many other countries. In 2016, India's AIDS prevalence rate stood at approximately 0.30%—the 80th highest in the world. Treatment of HIV/AIDS is primarily via a "drug cocktail" of antiretroviral drugs and education programs to help people avoid infection.
The AIDS Clinical Trials Group network (ACTG) is one of the largest HIV clinical trials organizations in the world, playing a major role in setting standards of care for HIV infection and opportunistic diseases related to HIV and AIDS in the United States and the developing world. The ACTG is composed of, and directed by, leading clinical scientists in HIV/AIDS therapeutic research. The ACTG is funded by the Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Neal A. Halsey is an American pediatrician, with sub-specialty training in infectious diseases, international health and epidemiology. Halsey is a professor emeritus of international health and director emeritus of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in Baltimore, Maryland. He had a joint appointment in the Department of Pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and serves as co-director of the Center for Disease Studies and Control in Guatemala.
UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland formerly known as Children's Hospital Oakland, is a pediatric acute care hospital located in Oakland, California. The hospital has 191 beds and is affiliated with the UCSF School of Medicine. The hospital provides comprehensive pediatric specialties and subspecialties to infants, children, teens and young adults aged 0–21 throughout Northern California. UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland also features a Level 1 Pediatric Trauma Center, one of five in the state.
NmVac4-A/C/Y/W-135 is the commercial name of the polysaccharide vaccine against the bacterium that causes meningococcal meningitis. The product, by JN-International Medical Corporation, is designed and formulated to be used in developing countries for protecting populations during meningitis disease epidemics.
Orphanhood in Romania became prevalent as a consequence of the Socialist Republic of Romania's pro-natality policy under Nicolae Ceaușescu. Its effectiveness led to an increase in birth rates at the expense of adequate family planning and reproductive rights. Its consequences were most felt with the collapse of the regime's social safety net during the Romanian austerity period, which led to widespread institutional neglect of the needs of orphans, with severe consequences in their health and well-being. A series of international and governmental interventions have taken place since the 1990s to improve the conditions in orphanages and reform the country's child protection system, with variable degrees of success.
Arthur J. Ammann was an American pediatric immunologist and advocate known for his research on HIV transmission, discovering in utero transmission and the risk of contaminated transfusions and blood products, and his role in the development of the first successful vaccine to prevent pneumococcal infection in 1977. He founded Global Strategies for HIV Prevention and was Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the UCSF Medical Center.
Vaccine-naive is a lack of immunity, or immunologic memory, to a disease because the person has not been vaccinated. There are a variety of reasons why a person may not have received a vaccination, including contraindications due to preexisting medical conditions, lack of resources, previous vaccination failure, religious beliefs, personal beliefs, fear of side-effects, phobias to needles, lack of information, vaccine shortages, physician knowledge and beliefs, social pressure, and natural resistance.
Deborah Persaud is a Guyanese-born American virologist who primarily works on HIV/AIDS at Johns Hopkins Children's Center.
Lauren V. Wood is an American allergist, immunologist, and staff physician at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, where she has served as a principal investigator. She is known for conducting studies of vaccines for cancer, Human papillomavirus (HPV), Hepatitis C, and HIV especially for use with children, teens and young adults. She holds the rank of captain in the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS).
Mark W. Kline is an American pediatrician and infectious diseases specialist who currently serves as the Physician-in-Chief, Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at Children's Hospital New Orleans and Professor of Pediatrics at the Tulane University School of Medicine and LSU Health New Orleans. Kline is known for his life-long work in building programs for children with HIV/AIDS all over the world.
Sabrina Bakeera Kitaka, commonly known as Sabrina Kitaka, is a Ugandan physician, pediatrician, pediatric infectious diseases specialist and academic, who serves as a senior lecturer in the Department of Pediatrics at Makerere University School of Medicine.
Philip A. Pizzo is an American professor, physician, and scientist. He is the David and Susan Heckerman Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Emeritus at Stanford University, and founding director of Stanford's Distinguished Careers Institute. He served as the 11th Dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine from 2001 to 2012. He spent over two decades at the National Institutes of Health, and has devoted much of his medical career to the diagnosis, management, prevention and treatment of children with cancer and AIDS. He has also focused on the future of higher education, specifically for individuals in mid- to late-life. In 2022, he enrolled as a rabbinical student at the Academy for Jewish Religion, California.
Peter Nicholas Kazembe was a Malawian pediatrician, well known internationally for his work in pediatric antiretroviral therapy and treatment of malaria. He was one of the first two pediatricians in the country and was often considered the "grandfather of pediatrics" in Malawi. He is credited with publishing over 250 journal articles in his field. He was the Director of the Baylor International Pediatric Program and an associate professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to this, he played a role in pioneering Malawi's pediatric HIV/AIDS care treatment guidelines, and was also the Director of Malawi's first HIV clinic and Chief of Pediatrics at Kamuzu Central Hospital.
Catherine Wilfert was an American pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases. She became a professor at Duke University School of Medicine and known internationally for her work in pediatric HIV prevention. After 1993, using zidovudine during pregnancy led to an estimated reduction of mother-to-infant transmission of HIV in the United States by 75 percent and a 47 percent decrease in new HIV infections globally.
Prasanna Nair is an Indian-born doctor working in the United States. She works in primary health care with a specialty in pediatric endocrinology
James M. Oleske is an American pediatrician and HIV/AIDs researcher who is the emeritus François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Professor of Pediatrics at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School in Newark, New Jersey. He is best known for his pioneering work in identifying HIV/AIDS as a pediatric disease, and treating and researching it beginning in the 1980s. He published one of the first articles identifying HIV/AIDS in children in JAMA in 1983 and was a co-author of one of the articles by Robert Gallo and others identifying the virus in Science in 1984.
Caroline Breese Hall was an American pediatrician who was a pediatrics professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center and studied pediatric diseases caused by respiratory syncytial virus and human herpesvirus 6.
