What is HIV and how do you get it?
HIV - the Human Immunodeficiency Virus - is a virus that kills your body's CD4 cells, which are the cells that help our body fight off infection. HIV can be transmitted to another person in one of these ways - any type of unprotected or blood to blood contact or mother to child. The virus must gain entry into the blood stream in order to infect an individual. One person must be HIV positive for transmission to occur. The virus is transmitted through specific body fluids. People may become infected with HIV by having intimate direct contact with the blood, semen, secretions or milk of someone that is infected with HIV.

Possible routes of transmission include the following:
• Having unprotected with someone who is HIV+
• Sharing a needle and/or syringe and other drug
   paraphernalia.
• Through any blood to blood contact with an
   individual who is HIV+.
• Babies born to women with HIV can also become
   infected during pregnancy, birth, or -feeding.
• Taboos/body piercings.

You cannot get HIV from:
• Working or being around someone who is HIV+.
• Sweat, spit, tears, clothes, drinking fountains, phones, toilet seats, insect bites
  or stings, or through everyday things like sharing a meal.
• Donating blood.
• From kissing unless your partner has bleeding gums or sores in their mouth.

What is AIDS?
AIDS -- Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome -- is a disease you get when HIV destroys your body's immune system. An HIV infected person receives a diagnosis of AIDS after developing one of the CDC defined AIDS indicator illness or when CD4 counts goes below 200.

Ways to protect yourself:
• Do not share needles and/or syringes used to inject drugs, steroids,
   tattooing or body piercing. Don't share razors, toothbrushes, or anything
   else that will put you in contact with another individual's blood.
• Abstain from ... or if you do have , have it with only one partner
   and use a latex every time. (If you are allergic to latex
   you can use polyurethane .) There are also that
   women can use to protect themselves.
• Educate yourself. Know all the facts about HIV and AIDS.

"Spread of AIDS"
New research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill suggests that an individual newly infected with HIV can transmit the virus to someone else in just five days. The findings, based on a study of five people who contracted the virus via unprotected , indicate that the first point at which HIV can be spread is between five and 13 days after infection. According to researcher Christopher Pilcher, the findings highlight the need to quickly identify the partners of people newly infected with HIV.

African Nations Must Help 11 Million AIDS Orphans, Religious Group Leader Says at AIDS in Africa Conference
[May 09, 2003]

African nations must assist the continent's 11 million AIDS orphans, or the children risk "being driven to the margins of society," All Africa Conference of Churches President Kwesi Dickson said on Wednesday in Nairobi, Kenya, at the opening session of a conference on AIDS in Africa sponsored by a consortium of religious groups, Agence France-Presse reports. "These children need education, feeding and nurturing ... otherwise the option will be the emergence of a large proportion of our society, who will have developed anti-social instincts because of their hard life," he said (Agence France-Presse, 5/7). Officials from the World Bank, World Health Organization, UNAIDS, UNICEF, the European Union, nongovernmental organizations and faith groups are attending the three-day conference, which is hosted by AACC and sponsored by the World Council of Churches, the World Conference on Religion and Peace and Caritas International, a Roman Catholic aid agency. Conference attendees will discuss how best to use money from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Agence France-Presse, 5/6). Dickson said that child-headed households were rare in Africa until the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. "Now another genocide -- a silent genocide which happens to be HIV/AIDS -- has caused child-headed households to be an increasing phenomenon in Africa," he said. Dickson said that efforts to fight HIV/AIDS in rural areas, where 70% of Africans reside, should be stepped up, and he encouraged religious organizations to continue to fight the stigma surrounding the disease (Agence France-Presse, 5/7).

www.kff.org (05/09/03)

The Only Sure Way To Know if You Have HIV is to get tested!

To schedule an appointment for a FREE and ANONYMOUS HIV test or to have more
of your questions answered call the Delaware HIV/STD Hotline at 1-800-422-0429.