HIV is unusual because it can infect others only when blood or body fluids are passed from an infected person to another person. This can happen during sex, when needles are shared, during childbirth, breast-feeding, blood transfusions or when sharp blades are used on more than one person, for example during circumcision or ear piercing.
The risk of infection during sex is higher for women than for men. It increases if sexually transmitted diseases are present. Forced sex or rape which causes bleeding greatly increases the risk of passing on HIV. Once people are infected with HIV, they can still continue to be infected with other strains of HIV, which increase the risk of AIDS developing more rapidly.
However, it is impossible to become infected with HIV through activities such as hugging, shaking hands, coughing, sharing cups and plates or toilets. None of these activities can pass on HIV, even when a person is dying from AIDS. Health workers caring for people with AIDS are very unlikely to become infected if they take care with blood and body fluids.
Discussion
- In what ways can HIV be passed from one person to another?
- What are likely to be the most common ways of becoming infected in our community?
- Are there traditions in our culture which could increase the spread of HIV?
- How could these traditions be challenged or changed to reduce the spread of HIV?
- The physical design of women (the vagina has delicate skin and is in lengthy contact with semen following sex) makes them more likely to become infected with HIV than men. In what other ways are women at particular risk of infection from HIV in our community? What kind of pressures might they experience to have sex which could expose them to the risk of HIV infection?
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