hiv/aids^*

HIV and AIDS continue to affect the lives of millions around the world. Until a vaccine or cure is found, our best weapon against HIV/AIDS is knowledge.

HIV CAN BE ONLY BE TRANSMITTED BY THREE PRIMARY METHODS:

• Unprotected sexual contact (primarily anal and vaginal).
• Exposure to infected blood and blood products (primarily through unscreened blood transfusions and the use of contaminated needles, syringes and other piercing instruments like scissors, razor blades, knives).
• Transmission from an HIV-positive mother to a child.

WHAT IS HIV/AIDS?

First discovered in the 1980s, HIV (Human Immuno-deficiency Virus) was found to be an infectious agent now known as a retrovirus. This agent causes what we call AIDS—Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome—not one, but a cluster of other diseases. The virus attacks and destroys certain white blood cells that are essential to the human immune system.

After a variable period of time, the virus becomes activated and then leads progressively to the serious infections and other conditions that characterize AIDS. Without treatment, HIV infection almost invariably leads to AIDS, which almost invariably leads to death. Today however, there are treatments that slow the progression of HIV infection and allow people infected with the virus to live healthily and productively for many years.

HIV-infected individuals become more infectious as they progress to HIVrelated disease and AIDS. There is also an early one-to-two week period of infectiousness around the time of seroconversion—that is, when antibodies first develop. After testing, a person carrying the virus is deemed “HIV-positive.”

The infected person becomes susceptible to a wide range of “opportunistic” infections, such as, Pneumocystitis carini pneumonia (PCP), which rarely occurs in persons with normal immune systems; tuberculosis (TB), and rare cancers such as Kaposi"s sarcoma (KS). HIV may also attack the brain causing neurological problems.