Introduction to HIV/AIDS

Becky Kuhn, M.D., co-founder of Global Lifeworks, covers critical basic information about HIV and AIDS. HIV is a virus that causes the disease AIDS, which can be fatal. There are treatments but no cure. HIV is spread by contact between body fluids (blood, semen, vaginal fluids, and breast milk) and mucous membranes (eyes, nose, mouth, and genitals). It is spread by sexual contact, injection drugs users sharing needles, from mother to child during childbirth or nursing, and (early on during the epidemic) by receiving blood transfusions. You can reduce your risk by abstaining from sex before marriage, being faithful to a single partner and using a condom and/or dental dam if you are sexually active, and by never injecting drugs or by never sharing needles if you do. It can take up to six months after exposure to HIV for a person to test HIV positive; even before they test HIV postive, the infected person can spread the disease to others. A doctor can prescribe antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to prevent HIV from progressing to clinical AIDS. It is critical to take every ARV dose on schedule to avoid developing a resistant strain of HIV. If a person is HIV positive, they still need to practice safer sex to avoid spreading HIV to others and to avoid contracting a different, resistant strain of HIV. This video refutes misinformation from the "Lee Evans HIV Tests" video. This video is freely downloadable from http://www.archive.org/details/av_intro . Disabled accessibility: The transcript for this and many other AIDSvideos.org videos can be downloaded from http://aidsvideos.org/translate.shtml . Visit http://www.GlobalLifeworks.org and http://AIDSvideos.org to learn more. [Do you want to help prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS? Are you fluent in a language other than English? Then volunteer to translate our videos into other languages! Click http://AIDSvideos.org/translate.shtml to to learn how you can help!!! © Copyright 2006-2011 Global Lifeworks. All rights reserved. This work is licensed to be used for non-commercial purposes under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/.]

Category:

Howto & Style

License:

Standard YouTube License