Claim: There is still a widespread opinion that a person infected with HIV can be recognized based on their appearance, because, for example, they are extremely thin. On social networks, thin people are often faced with the question of whether they are infected, and people who are really infected often hear around them that they don't really look like that.
Fact: That's wrong.
Holger Vicht, a spokesman for the German AIDS Service, says: "HIV is invisible. When a person gets infected, something goes on in the body for years that is not visible from the outside at all." Only in the first week after infection, flu-like symptoms may or may not occur. Then they also disappear.
Viht says that people with severe AIDS should not be equated with people who carry the virus. "AIDS is a serious disease, which appears if the infection is not treated. They are two completely different things. AIDS is the last stage, HIV is an infection, and the infection is invisible."
And the United Nations program to combat HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) emphasizes "A person infected with HIV can look healthy and feel well, but transmit the virus." Only a test provides certainty.
Assertion: All people infected with this virus are contagious - that's what the majority of people think.
Fact: Wrong.
The World Health Organization (WHO) explains: "People infected with HIV, who are on antiretroviral therapy and whose viral load is no longer measurable, do not transmit HIV to sexual partners."
Medicines prevent the virus from multiplying in the body. The presence of the virus in the body is reduced to the extent that ordinary tests do not register it, and then the sexual partner cannot be infected. "This state of viral suppression can be reversed if the person no longer has access to medication or if they do not take it as prescribed," warn experts from the World Health Organization.
UNAIDS states that 39 million people worldwide are living with the virus. 71 percent of them achieved a reduction of the virus below the measurable limit with antiretroviral therapy, or the virus is measurable at such a low level that UN medical experts consider the risk of infection during unprotected sex to be "almost zero or negligible".
Assertion: There is still a widespread opinion that it is easy to get infected in everyday life.
Fact: Wrong.
The way the virus spreads has been well studied. Human contacts in everyday life are not part of the way of infection. "The main route of infection is sexual transmission or, in other words, sexual contact," says Adrian Puren, director of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NICD) in South Africa. According to UNAIDS, that country is severely affected by this disease, i.e. every fifth or sixth person between the ages of 15 and 49 is infected.
Otherwise, transmission of the virus is also possible in situations where someone is exposed to products with traces of blood, such as, for example, a used needle in the medical field or when consuming drugs. Theoretically, this is also possible with a blood transfusion.
However, blood donors are usually well screened before their blood is approved for use. The World Health Organization says that in countries with high incomes, screening is carried out in 99,8 percent of cases, while in countries with lower incomes, screening is at the level of 76 percent.
Puren says that the third way of infection is the transmission of the virus from mother to child, during pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding. But even in those cases, drugs can drastically reduce the risk of transmitting the virus. According to data from the CDC health institution from the United States of America, the risk of transmitting the virus from mother to child can be reduced to less than one percent with medication.
The virus is only transmitted through certain body fluids. These are blood, semen, vaginal and rectal fluids, as well as breast milk. "HIV cannot survive for long outside the human body (such as on the surface of objects) and cannot reproduce outside the human body," the CDC writes.
The World Health Organization states that it cannot be contracted through daily contact, handshakes, kisses, or when sharing food or water. The CDC states that the only exception is when an infected person chews the food they feed the baby, and blood gets into the food due to bleeding in the mouth.
Saliva, tears and sweat are not sources of infection. HIV is not transmitted through the air or by sitting on the toilet bowl.
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