What does "Aids” mean?

Aids stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome:

-Acquired means you can get infected with it;

-Immune Deficiency means a weakness in the body’s system that fights diseases; and

-Syndrome means a group of health problems that make up a disease.

Aids is caused by a virus called HIV: Human Immunodeficiency Virus. If you get infected with HIV, your body will try to fight the infection. It will make "antibodies,” special molecules to fight HIV.

Transmission

Anyone can contract HIV – it doesn’t discriminate. HIV lives in the bodily fluids of an infected person - blood, vaginal secretions, and semen and breast milk. Transmission takes place when these fluids are exchanged.

Most people are infected through:
- Unprotected sex (vaginal, anal or oral) with an infected person.

- Sharing needles/syringes when injecting drugs, using unclean tattooing and piercing equipment.

- Pregnancy, childbirth or breast feeding when the mother is HIV positive. HIV must get into your blood stream to infect you.

That means if you’re having sex and any of your partner’s blood, semen (including pre-cum), or vaginal secretions come in contact with a cut or a tear in the lining of your vagina, anus or mouth, even tiny, invisible ones, you are at risk of being infected.

You can’t get infected with HIV through everyday social contact such as kissing, hugging, touching, sneezing, coughing, playing sports, sharing eating utensils, or sharing a bathroom with a person who is infected.

There are no documented cases of transmission through saliva, sweat or tears. Mosquitoes, fleas and other biting insects don’t transmit HIV either.

Who gets HIV?

HIV does not discriminate. The virus does not single out any skin colour, faith, sexual orientation or economic status.

It is not who you are, but in most cases it’s what you do that determines whether you can become infected with HIV.

Of course, there are exceptions; some people are born HIV positive, the disease having been passed on by their mother.

For others their HIV status is as a result of a blood transfusion received before stringent testing of donated blood was in place.

Continues next week……

"You have a good heart, Wainaina. It’s all that counts.”

So Njeri, Princess Laughing Dove, married Wainaina and went to live in his house on the edge of the forest. Each morning they woke to the blue spires of Mount Kenya.

Each night they went to bed happy with their day’s work. And when one day Njeri told Wainaina there would soon be a child, he thought he would burst with joy.

He told everyone he met the mountain too: "A child coming! Just think. I must work harder.
 
To be continued…