HIV/AIDS Awareness

from Women Of Excellence Magazine December Edition

Home For The Holidays With The Rispers

HIV/AIDS

AWARENESS

Deborah Risper

You have H.I.V……the words no one ever wants to hear. Unfortunately, over 1.1 million people in the United States live with H.I.V or AIDS. While there is no current cure for these diseases, there is hope and help. Medication and lifestyle changes can assist with a longer life span. Patients with a healthy lifestyle and consistent education tend to live a good life. Below you will find factual information provided by the CDC to help spread awareness about HIV/AIDS. For those living with the diseases it is our prayer at W.O.E that you not allow the diagnosis to overcome the life promised to you.

In the United States, HIV is mainly spread by having sex or sharing syringes and other injection equipment with someone who is infected with HIV. Substance use can contribute to these risks indirectly because alcohol and other drugs can lower people’s inhibitions and make them less likely to use condoms.

People with HIV should take medicine to treat HIV as soon as possible. HIV medicine is called antiretroviral therapy, or ART. If taken as prescribed, HIV medicine reduces the amount of HIV in the body (viral load) to a very low level, which keeps the immune system working and prevents illness. This is called viral suppression—defined as having less than 200 copies of HIV per milliliter of blood. HIV medicine can even make the viral load so low that a test can’t detect it. This is called an undetectable viral load. Getting and keeping an undetectable viral load* is the best thing people with HIV can do to stay healthy. Another benefit of reducing the amount of virus in the body is that it helps prevent transmission to others through sex or syringe sharing, and from mother to child during pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding. This is sometimes referred to as treatment as prevention. There is strong evidence about treatment as prevention for some of the ways HIV can be transmitted, but more research is needed for other ways.

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/art/ index.html