What is HIV?

How do you get HIV?

What does the HIV virus do?

What is the difference between HIV and AIDS?

How will I know if I have HIV or AIDS?

What treatment is available if I have HIV?

What happens when I forget to take my HIV medications?

Where should I get my medications?

What is HIV?

• HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), is the virus that causes AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome)
• A virus is an infectious agent which uses cells within a living host in order to replicate and produce more copies of itself

How do you get HIV?

• By having unprotected sex with a person who carries the virus
• By sharing needles
• A mother who has the virus can pass it on to her baby before or during birth, or through breast-feeding
• By having a blood transfusion with infected blood (this occurred prior to the discovery of HIV/AIDS in the early 1980's).

What does the HIV virus do?

• The HIV virus weakens the body's immune system, making it harder to stay health and fight infections

What is the difference between HIV and AIDS?

• If you have the HIV virus you are “HIV positive”
• If the virus has lowered your immune system so that you become sick from opportunistic diseases then you have “AIDS” (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome)
• If you take care of yourself and take your medications as prescribed by your doctor, you greatly reduce the chance of becoming sick with “AIDS”

How will I know if I have HIV or AIDS?

• HIV & AIDS are not diagnoses you can make yourself
• HIV tests look for the presence of the virus in a sample
• AIDS is diagnosed when the immune system is severely weakened. If you are infected with HIV and your CD4 count drops below 200 cells/mm3, or if you develop an AIDS-defining condition (an illness that is very unusual in someone who is not infected with HIV), you have AIDS.

What treatment is available if I have HIV?

• HIV treatment includes the use of anti-HIV medications to keep an HIV- infected person healthy
• Anti-HIV medications lower the amount of HIV virus that lives in your body. The lower the levels of the HIV virus, the healthier you will be and the better you will feel
• Taking your medications on time every day will help keep the virus from growing

What happens when I forget to take my HIV medications?

• The drugs could stop working (you build up a resistance to the good effects of the medications)
• The HIV virus has a chance to duplicate which could make you become sick

Where should I get my medications?

• It is best to get your prescriptions from a pharmacy that specializes in HIV/AIDS, like Central Drugs, because we have programs deigned to help our customers acquire the medications they need and comply with the medication regime, all free of charge.