My girlfriend works in a nursing home and is always looking over my shoulder when I am doing things for my HIV class. I was really trying to find new things I haven’t seen anyone talk about yet and was unable to find anything awesome. She told me to talk about HIV and the elderly. She says she sees HIV patients trying to get admitted several times a week, often being refused because they lack adequate health insurance to cover their expensive drug regiments. So I thought it was a great idea, you don’t hear of the elderly and HIV very much, most people would probably think they would pass away from such a powerful virus.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, over 10% of HIV-positive people in the U.S. are older than age 50, by 2015, this number will double (CDC, 2007). People don’t like to think about it but elderly people do have sex. A lot of which is unprotected and with multiple partners. With the advent of Viagra for men and hormones for women and no risk for pregnancy, some nursing home residents become “bed hoppers” as I have heard a few of my girlfriends colleagues say. They face the same risk as anyone else. We all know HIV does not discriminate. You guys might have heard about the STD outbreak in The Villages, just to back up what I am saying. A gynecologist said she “treats more cases of herpes and the human papilloma virus in the retirement community than she did in the city of Miami” (Clickorlando, 2008).
Elderly people who get diagnosed with HIV have an increased risk of mortality; increasing with age, sometimes dying within months of diagnosis. Elderly people can be misdiagnosed due to health conditions that often effect people of their age, such as weight loss, memory loss, confusion and behavior changes (CDC, 2007).
I will look into this further for my next post, it seems really interesting.
(2008). Stds running rampant in retirement community. clickorlando, Retrieved from http:// www.clickorlando.com/news/9283707/detail.html
(2007). Centers for disease control and prevention. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/hiv /topics/over50/challenges.htm
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Elders having sexual intercourse is more common than you might think. I have definetely heard about the entire communities that spread all sorts of diseases around because of the promiscuity of the residents with the Villages being the one that was probably the most popular story out there. I guess you could come to the same conclustion about the precentage increasing for the older population with the advances in the medical regiments. I am looking forward to what you find out in the future posts.
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I did some research about HIV and seniors at the beginning of the semester. One of the questions of the week we had to do was an interview and I asked my grandmother if she thought HIV/AIDS was a problem in her community...she replied by telling me "Kellie, I live in an old folk's area" I put that in my answer and Linda shot back telling me the truth about seniors and HIV, and that it is on the rise. People have to remember...
ReplyDeleteSex does not end at 50
Life begins at 50
Good luck on your research, you will be surprised with the information that you find, I know I was.
Lucas this was a great topic to talk about, and I have never heard of anyone write about HIV and the elderly. I am also surprised at how many people are over 50 and have HIV/AIDS. I remember reading from material in this class that yes, elderly people do have sex but do not know much about what they can catch from having sex. I also read that they do not know much about HIV/AIDS. Great article!
ReplyDeleteWhy don't you continue on this topic. You are quite correct when you say there are more cases of STDs in this population. After all they grew up when antibiotics took care of everything. No one targeted this age group for HIV education and the media said it was a disease of young people.
ReplyDelete