What exactly are HIV and AIDS?

HIV stands for human immunodeficiency virus. It is a virus that infects the cells of a person’s immune system. As the immune system becomes weaker and weaker, the infected person acquires an “immune deficiency”.

A person with an immune deficiency is more vulnerable to a wide range of infections and diseases. These are known as “opportunistic” infections because they take advantage of a person’s weakened immune system. Many of these infections are very rare and hardly ever affect people who are not infected with HIV.

As the immune system becomes weaker, these opportunistic infections become more serious. In the end, these are what kill the HIV-infected person, not the virus itself. The word used to describe this combination of opportunistic infections is AIDS. It stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

How is HIV spread?

HIV is a sexually transmitted disease. You can get it by having unprotected sex with either men or women. Use a condom and you won’t get infected. The risk of becoming infected during unprotected sex is higher for a woman than it is for a man.

Intravenous drug users can spread the virus by sharing needles. The virus can also be spread by contaminated blood during blood transfusions. It can be transmitted from mother to child during pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding.

Most people will not know they are infected with HIV until the first symptoms of AIDS start to appear. Because people may not realize they are infected, they can spread the virus for years without knowing it. If not treated, most HIV-infected people develop the first symptoms of AIDS within eight to 10 years.

HIV testing

HIV testing is one of the key ways of preventing the spread of AIDS. HIV tests don’t look for the virus itself. They check for antibodies – chemicals the body produces to fight infections. If the tests find HIV antibodies in your blood, you’re probably HIV positive.

Unfortunately, it takes three to six months for the antibodies to develop. In the time between infection and the development of antibodies, you can still spread HIV but have a negative test result.