HIV and AIDS

AIDS is a collection of symptoms and infections which occur as a result of a blood and sexually-transmitted virus called HIV suppressing the immune system. The diseases which are associated with AIDS do not spread from an infected person to a healthy person, but HIV itself does spread, and over time, an HIV infection can lead to the same diseases. An HIV infection never goes away, there is no cure, and HIV treatments are insufficient and expensive. The symptoms of AIDS cannot be treated effectively.

Because of its long latent phase, its devastating effect on communities, and the stigma against understanding it, AIDS is one of the most disruptive natural forces in society.
symptoms
After a person becomes infected with HIV, that person will have slight symptoms 2 weeks later. These symptoms include fever, malaise, swollen lymph glands, sore throat, and sometimes upset stomach. These symptoms are generally milder than cold or flu effects, and they will not last longer than 4 weeks. This is called the “acute phase.”

After week 6 nothing will happen for 1 to 15 years. This is called the “latent phase.” It is almost never possible to predict how long the latent phase will last, but 8 years is the average.

After the latent phase, then a person is highly likely to develop the syndrome called AIDS. AIDS has its own phases, starting with a person getting a lot of minor illnesses, leading to a person getting some serious diseases, and finally a person begins to get rare and bizarre infections which are not seen except in people who have AIDS.
spread
Infection with HIV occurs through the transfer of blood, vaginal fluids, semen, pre-ejaculate, or breast milk.

The usual way for HIV to spread by blood is through the sharing of syringes for injection drug use. It can also spread during tattooing or body-piercing procedures if the administrator uses any infected equipment without proper sterilization. Blood screening procedures have largely eliminated the spread of HIV during transfusions in hospitals in the developed world.

HIV usually transfers from one person to another by sexual intercourse without condom use. All types of sexual intercourse have some risk, with increasing risks for manual, oral, vaginal, and anal sex practices. Having knowledge of the risk associated with a sex act can greatly reduce the likelihood of contracting or giving an HIV infection. For example, if a couple live together and have sex, and one has HIV and one does not, and they always use condoms, there is little risk that HIV will spread to the infected person.

HIV also spreads from an infected mother to her baby at birth or through breast-feeding. A pregnant woman with HIV can take medication before childbirth to increase the chance that her baby will not get HIV from her. The medication is expensive and has harsh side effects, but it works. A woman with HIV should not breast feed, even if her baby already has HIV.

Persons with HIV are at greatly increased risk for both contracting and spreading other sexually transmitted diseases. Having any other STD greatly increases the risk of contracting HIV.
treatment
There is no way to cure HIV. There are drugs called “antivirals” which temporarily reduce the amount of HIV in a person’s body, but these drugs cannot remove all the HIV, and they are extremely expensive, and they harm the body. They also require a lot of education to use. It is not a matter of simply taking a pill every day; a person will have to study and take classes to learn how to get any effect from the medicine.

Prevention is the best way to control HIV in society. The primary prevention technique is education – all people have a responsibility to know what HIV is, how it is spread, and how a person can reduce likelihood of getting and spreading HIV. For injection drug users, there is one rule – always use clean syringes when injecting drugs. For everyone else, the next step is to learn one’s own HIV status. Getting tested for HIV does not mean that a person is a drug user or promiscuous, and if people who are not drug-users and who are not promiscuous do not get tested, then they are propagating negative stereotypes associated with getting tested and making other people feel stigma about getting tested. After learning one’s own HIV status, then that person should make an assessment of sexual risks in life which are acceptable to take, and then live by it. Different risks are acceptable for different people. The safest risks to take are mutual long-term two-person exclusive relationships or the use of condoms for all sexual encounters.

There is an intense social stigma associated with HIV because it is associated with sexual activity. In all societies, in all places, in all religions, there are people – especially young people – who want to have sex but are not in a committed relationship. In all societies, in all places, in all religions – these people who want to have sex find each other and have sex. Sometimes these people commit to each other in marriage, but sexual attraction alone is statistically not a good basis for founding a long-term relationship.
example of the effect of HIV
In many places, young people will get HIV through sex at some time in their youth, but not know it, because their society does not acknowledge that young people sometimes have sex outside marriage. Later, when these young people are more mature, they will commit to another person in marriage and start a family. During the mother’s pregnancy, the doctor might do blood tests and find that she has HIV. This leads to testing which finds that the boy has HIV. Neither boy nor girl remembers having any symptoms, because one of them got HIV at age 18 and perhaps now they are both 23. At this point, there will be extreme tension as the boy might blame the girl for giving him HIV, and the girl might blame the boy for giving her HIV. The boy’s family and the girl’s family pressurize each other. The girl then gives birth, and the baby may or may not have HIV. In any case, both the boy and girl die shortly thereafter. Their young child will either die of HIV a few years later or grow up an orphan.