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Avoiding AIDS

Avoiding AIDS

AVOIDING AIDS

Reprinted from the September 1987 issue of “FDA Consumer,” the official publication of the Food and Drug Administration.

Here’s what everyone should know to protect themselves and others from AIDS:

AIDS is contagious, but not in the same way that measles or chicken pox or the common cold is contagious. It is a sexually transmitted, blood-borne disease that spreads from one person to another these ways:

  • By sexual intercourse between a man and a woman or between two men. The virus can be spread through vaginal, anal or oral sex.
  • By sharing needles or “works” used to inject drugs.
  • By an infected woman to her baby during pregnancy or delivery, and possibly through breast-feeding.
  • By transfusion of infected blood or blood components, although this risk has been sharply reduced by screening procedures for blood and blood donors and new ways to process blood components used to treat clotting disorders, such as hemophilia.

Many people with the AIDS virus have no symptoms and may look and feel completely well for many years. But these people can transmit the virus to others, probably during their entire lifetime. And a person can become infected after just a single exposure to the virus.

The AIDS virus (human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV) does NOT spread through casual social contact. In six years of tracking and studying AIDS, scientists have found no evidence that HIV is spread casually through contact at school or on the job, by sharing meals or office equipment, or by handshakes or hugs with an infected person. There is no reason to avoid ordinary social contact with a person with AIDS.

There is no risk of getting AIDS by giving blood; new equipment is used for each donor.

AIDS is not spread by sexual intercourse between two people who maintain a sexual relationship exclusively with each other and who have not been previously infected.

The U.S. Public Health Services recommends that people take these precautions to reduce the risk of exposing themselves or others to the AIDS virus.

  • The best protection against sexually transmitted infection by the virus is, of course, to abstain from sex or to have a mutually monogamous relationship with an uninfected person. Avoiding sex with people who have AIDS, people who have tested positive for the AIDS virus antibody, or people at increased risk of infection would also eliminate the risk of sexually transmitted infection.
  • If you’re not sure that your sex partner is not infected, avoid contact with his or her body fluids. (Body fluids include blood, semen, urine, feces, saliva, and vaginal secretions.)

–Use condoms, which will reduce (but not eliminate) the possibility of transmitting the virus.
–Avoid practices such as anal intercourse that may injure body tissues. –Avoid oral-genital contact.
–Avoid open-mouthed, intimate kissing.

  • Do not have sex with multiple partners. The more partners you have, the greater your risk of infection.
  • Do not use illegal intravenous drugs. If you do, don’t share needles or syringes.

If you think you may be infected, or if you have engaged in high-risk sexual or drug-related behavior:

  • Seek counseling and a medical evaluation. consider taking the AIDS antibody test, which would enable you to know your status and protect yourself or–if you are infected–your sex partner.
  • Do not use illegal intravenous drugs. If you don, don’t share needles or syringes.
  • Don’t donate blood, plasma, body organs, other body tissues, or sperm.

If you are a woman at increased risk, seriously consider delaying plans for pregnancy until more in known about AIDS and transmission of the AIDS virus. A pregnant woman infected with the AIDS virus has a 30 percent to 50 percent chance of passing the virus on to her unborn child. Women at increased risk of AIDS should take the antibody test before deciding to become pregnant.

For people who have received a positive result on the AIDS antibody test:

  • See a doctor. Either avoid sex or tell your prospective sex partner your AIDS test result and take the precautions listed above to protect him or her from infection.
  • Inform anyone whom you may have exposed to the AIDS virus–through sex or drug use–of their potential exposure, and encourage them to seek counseling and antibody testing.
  • Don’t share toothbrushes, razors, or other items that could become contaminated with blood.
  • If you use drugs, enroll in a treatment program. Never share needles and other drug equipment.
  • Do not donate blood, plasma, sperm, or other body tissues or organs.
  • Tell your doctor, dentist and eye doctor that you are infected with the AIDS virus so that proper precautions can be taken to protect you, them and others.
  • Women with a positive antibody test should avoid pregnancy.