Our latest writing assignment in College Composition was to write a mini sort of research paper. The topic was to pick something that we are passionate about. I decided that I would write mine on AIDS. It’s a very interesting topic, and I thought it would be something that could benefit my education. In the next few paragraphs I am going to explain some of the most interesting things I learned about AIDS. All of the information is educational, but a lot of it is very devastating.

AIDS has been around for a long time, but it became a very dangerous disease in the early 1970’s. Despite evidence that prevention programs instituted some time ago are beginning to have an impact in some countries, the HIV/AIDS epidemic continues to grow. At the end of last year, (2005) the number of AIDS patients had grown to over 40 million people, which is double the number from ten years ago. In 2005 alone, there were 17.5 million women with AIDS, and 2.3 million children under the age of 15. More than 700,000 children became newly infected with AIDS in 2005. 3.2 million of the 4.9 newly infected patients with AIDS in 2005 occurred in South Africa. Ninety Six percent of AIDS patients live developing countries; most of them are from South Africa. In Africa, three quarters of the infected patients are women. Worldwide, only one in ten people infected with AIDS have been tested and know that they have AIDS.