1. Blood to blood contact. If you become "blood brothers" with someone and your blood touches there, you are at a risk. Sharing needles or syringes that have been previously used (such as tattooing, body piercing, or drug using) also puts you at a risk.
2. Sexual contact. Having unprotected sex certainly makes you a target for the disease. Don't be fooled either. You can get AIDS/HIV if you have anal, oral, or phallic sex.
3. Perinatal contact. If you are born to a woman with AIDS, there is a very great chance that you have it. Mothers who have the disease that give birth, usually give it to their children.

The reasons for these are simple. They all include a bodily fluid of some kind. That is how the virus is carried. Infectious body fluids include:

• Blood
• Semen
• Vaginal/Cervical Secretions
• Breast Milk

Saliva is NOT an infectious fluid due to the enzymes in it that break up the virus. The pH level of the mouth is detrimental to the strain. There is not a sufficient concentration of the virus in saliva to consider it infectious.

The virus MUST be in the blood stream for a person to become infected.

• You can get AIDS/HIV by casual contact. This is a falsehood. You can NOT get AIDS from someone by hugging, shaking hands, sharing equipment, using public restrooms, sneezing, or coughing.
• You can contract AIDS/HIV through an insect bite. Incorrect. There is no way to get the disease or virus from an insect bite.
• If you kiss someone with AIDS/HIV, you can get the viurs. WRONG! This would relate to the casual contact clause and the saliva clause. Saliva is not considered an infectious fluid, and kissing is considered casual contact.

• Heat
• Hand soap
• Hydrogen peroxide
• Anything with 25% alcohol
• Bleach
• Lysol or any other disinfectant

Two tests are availible: Confidential and Anonymus. Confidential testing becomes a part of your medical record and can only be released with your written concent, unless a court supeonas it. Anonymus testing only requires identifying information (age, race, gender), but name and other identifiers are not used. All HIV Antibody tests are considered confidential.

• The total number of persons living with AIDS is estimated to be 33.4 million.
• That is 10% higher than last year.
• The number of AIDS related deaths in 1998 was 2.5 million and the total number since the begining of the epidemic is 13.9 million.
• It is estimated that 11 men, women, and children around the world per minute were infected with the virus, 6 million total.
• One tenth of all people newly infected were under the age of 15.
• Children alive with HIV: 1.2 million.