Law enforcement officers on the streets need to come across people that are either hurt, injured or they can be criminals that are armed and can attack or harm them. In their defense, these officers might need to attack as well, and that may cause contact with blood or exchange through droplets in the air, and if any person is infected with a blood-borne disease, then they are at risk to catch the disease as well. (The Workplace Safety Store, 2012).
As it happens, diseases such as hepatitis B, hepatitis C and most importantly HIV are very common in the present day and all these diseases are life threatening and easy to catch. They spread through contact with an infected person and if caught by a healthy one, then leave no room for safety. The human immune deficiency virus is incurable and easy to catch. It is spread by the transfusion of blood or fluid, and it remains an incurable disease to date. There are treatments available for hepatitis B and C, but HIV only progresses and becomes worse with the passage of time. The problem with the disease is it doesn’t show its symptoms in the beginning to most people, and they might not even know they have the disease years until they begin. HIV particularly is life threatening because the virus kills the immune system and the person might get a variety of illnesses at the same time like pneumonia, flu, fever, sore throat, nausea, diarrhea, headaches and a multitude of problems that accentuate with the passage of time. The next step from HIV is AIDS which is incurable, and it means the disease has overtaken the human body. Bloodborne diseases are quite common in fact there are over a million people in the States that are infected with HIV, many of them not even knowing about its occurrence. And since these diseases are associated with people living a loose life, addiction, alcoholism and then their association with crimes, it leaves no less a threat to the lives of law enforcement officers that they are at risk of catching a disease when they come into contact with them.
References
The Workplace Safety Store. (2012, November 24). Bloodborne pathogens- First Responders-
Safety Training. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFkeEpMr-Go
