HIV can be transmitted in three main ways:
1. Sexual transmission
2. Transmission through blood
3. Mother-to-child transmission
Who needs HIV prevention?
Anyone can become infected with HIV, and so promoting widespread awareness of HIV through basic HIV and AIDS education is vital for preventing all forms of HIV transmission. Specific programmes can target key groups who have been particularly affected by a country’s epidemic, for example children, women, men who have sex with men, injecting drug users and sex workers. Older people are also a group who require prevention measures, as in some countries an increasing number of new infections are occurring among those aged over 50.
HIV prevention needs to reach both people who are at risk of HIV infection and those who are already infected:
1. People who do not have HIV need interventions that will enable them to protect themselves from becoming infected.
2. People who are already living with HIV need knowledge and support to protect their own health and to ensure that they don’t transmit HIV to others - known as “positive prevention”.
Someone can eliminate or reduce their risk of becoming infected with HIV during sex by choosing to:
- Abstain from sex or delay first sex
- Be faithful to one partner or have fewer partners
- Condomise, which means using male or female condoms consistently and correctly
- Use new clean needle to transfer blood
- Do not share needle to transfer blood
- Do not take blood from one who is alredy infected by HIV
- HIV can be transmitted from a mother to her baby during pregnancy, labour and delivery, and later through breastfeeding. The first step towards reducing the number of babies infected in this way is to prevent HIV infection in women, and to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says the following signs and symptoms may be warning signs of late-stage HIV infection: - rapid weight loss
- dry cough
- recurring fever or profuse night sweats
- profound and unexplained fatigue
- swollen lymph glands in the armpits, groin, or neck
- diarrhea lasting more than a week
- white spots or unusual blemishes on the tongue, in the mouth, or in the throat
- pneumonia
- red, brown, pink, or purplish blotches on or under the skin or inside the mouth, nose, or eyelids
- memory loss, depression, and other neurological disorders
HIV destroys the white blood cells that are required to fight infection. As the white cell count falls to dangerous levels, numerous infections and diseases emerge. It is at this point that a person is said to have AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). According to the CDC, as with an initial HIV infection, you cannot rely on these signs and symptoms to establish a diagnosis of AIDS. The symptoms of AIDS are similar to the symptoms of many other illnesses. AIDS is a medical diagnosis made by a healthcare professional based on specific criteria established by the CDC.
Source:http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/qa/qa5.htm
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