Welcome
!
Page and graphic
design by Brian Dang
Copyright © 1997
GayViet Network.
All rights reserved.
Guide
to HIV Test
What is HIV?
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was
first reported in the USA in 1981. Today the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which
causes AIDS, is present in virtually every country in the world and continues to spread
faster than international efforts to stop it. Every day an estimated 7500 adults and 1000
children across the world become infected.
In the UK, 31,001 people are reported to have been
infected with HIV up to December 1997. In the same period, there have been 15,074
diagnosed with AIDS, of whom 10,977 have died.
(Source: AIDS/HIV Quarterly Surveillance Tables,
February 1998, No 38: 97/4 PHLS AIDS Centre, Scottish Centre for Infection and
Environmental Health.)
How is HIV transmitted?
HIV is a virus that can damage the body's defence
system so that it cannot easily fight off certain infections. Once HIV infection is
established it stays in the body for life. If someone with HIV goes on to get certain
illnesses, they are said to have AIDS.
In the UK there are three main ways in which HIV
can be passed on:
- by having penetrative sex without a condom with
someone who has HIV;
- by using needles, syringes or other drug-injecting
equipment that are infected with HIV;
- from a woman with HIV to her baby during pregnancy,
at birth or through breast-feeding.
Worldwide, the most common way of becoming infected
is by sex between men and women. In the UK, most new infections are amongst gay and
bisexual men, although the rate of HIV infection amongst heterosexual men and women is
rising.
This page was
last updated
on 06/01/98.
|