HOW DO YOU GET INFECTED WITH HIV?

HOW DO YOU GET INFECTED WITH HIV?

The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is not spread easily. You can only get HIV if you get infected blood or sexual fluids into your system. You can’t get it from mosquito bites, coughing or sneezing, sharing household items, or swimming in the same pool as someone with HIV.

Some people talk about “shared body fluids” being risky for HIV, but no documented cases of HIV have been caused by sweat, saliva or tears. However, even small amounts of blood in your mouth might transmit HIV during kissing or oral sex. Blood can come from flossing your teeth, or from sores caused by gum disease, or by eating very hot or sharp, pointed food.

To infect someone, the virus has to get past the body’s defenses. These include skin and saliva. If your skin is not broken or cut, it protects you against infection from blood or sexual fluids. Saliva contains chemicals that can help kill HIV in your mouth.

If HIV-infected blood or sexual fluid gets inside your body, you can get infected. This can happen through an open sore or wound, during sexual activity, or if you share equipment to inject drugs.

HIV can also be spread from a mother to her child during pregnancy or delivery. This is called “vertical transmission.” A baby can also be infected by drinking an infected woman’s breast milk. Fact Sheet 611 has more information on pregnancy. Adults exposed to breast milk of an HIV-infected woman may also be exposed to HIV.

WHAT ABOUT DRUG RESISTANCE?

WHAT ABOUT DRUG RESISTANCE?

Many new copies of HIV are mutations. They are slightly different from the original virus. Some mutations can keep multiplying even when you are taking an ARV. When this happens, the drug will stop working. This is called "developing resistance" to the drug. See Fact Sheet 126 for more information on resistance.

Sometimes, if your virus develops resistance to one drug, it will also have resistance to other ARVs. This is called "cross-resistance."

Resistance can develop quickly. It is very important to take ARVs according to instructions, on schedule, and not to skip or reduce doses.

HOW IS COMBIVIR TAKEN?

Combivir is taken by mouth as a tablet. The normal adult dose is one tablet, two times a day. Each tablet includes 300 milligrams (mg) of zidovudine (Retrovir) and 150 mg of lamivudine (Epivir).

Combivir can be taken with food, or between meals.

The dosage of lamivudine should be reduced for people who weigh less than 50 kilograms (110 pounds). People who weigh less than 110 pounds should normally not take Combivir.

response to this threat and horror called AIDS

What do we in UFMCC say in response to this threat and horror called AIDS? In addition to keeping ourselves informed regarding the information from the Center for Disease Control, other research programs, the sensitivity and awareness of medical professionals in our respective areas, and the local and national AIDS support groups within our own communities, should we as a unique and spiritual body begin formulating an equally unique and spiritual response? I believe the answer is yes. As a people whose every action and decision must be guided by the Good News that God was present in Jesus Christ and continues that presence with us through the Holy Spirit, we must bring the same innovative and creative energy to this issue that we are attempting to bring to so many others with which we are faced.

I would like for the remainder of this article to be seen as nothing more than a beginning. The four points of departure which I shall discuss are, to me, crucial. However, they are in no way exhaustive. I invite other persons within UFMCC to revise and augment them. Seeing this, therefore, as the beginning of a process, I would like to suggest that we internalize and actualize at least the following four awarenesses in our response.

First, we must remain a sex-positive people.

AIDS VICTIM: “I should have known that God would punish me for having too much fun.”

One of the most tragic mistakes we could make would be to become a sex-negative people, even inadvertently. Both in language and attitude we must avoid any indication that AIDS is in any way a “plague” or “punishment” being visited upon us because of our sexuality. Instead, it is a time for an intense and personal evaluation, on the part of Gay males, of our sexual patterns, and caution and restraint in activities known to put one at increased risk.

Two thousand years of ignorance, fear, guilt, and shame regarding human sexuality (to say nothing of homosexuality) is just beginning to be reversed within Christian thought, writings and practice. I believe that the existence and witness of UGMCC has been an inextricable factor in this reversal. To abdicate that influence now, an influence I God has clearly called us to, would constitute sin on our parts.

Second, we must create spiritual support systems for victims, spouses, families and friends.

SPOUSE OF AIDS VICTIM: “Our friends were afraid to come to the hospital. Toward the end, they wouldn’t even come to the house. They didn’t even call but I think that was because they felt guilty.”

church, AIDS has also brought reconciliation

church, AIDS has also brought reconciliation between the sexes, a rift that has been especially deep between lesbians and gay men. Like other women, lesbians face economic disadvantages. But in the case of lesbians, their resulting anger at men is untempered by romantic involvement with the opposite sex. Most lesbian feminists feel it is a waste of energy to spend it in the traditional female role of helping men, their oppressors. However, that feeling doesn’t prevail in our church. When the topic of lesbians ministering to men with AIDS came up during a reception the women of our church held for Karen Ziegler, pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church in New York, Ziegler responded this way: “I don’t feel like I’m sacrificing — I receive energy by ministering to men with AIDS.” She told us how “some men I love very much — my friends David and Tim — began to die of AIDS. I had the experience of coming closer than I ever had come to a man before. David and then Tim opened a door to their souls in a way that I had never experienced before and my heart has been opened in a way it never was before, too. We’re all experiencing that transformation together.”

We have also connected with Congregation Shahar Zahav, a Reform synagogue with a lesbian and gay congregation, located a few blocks from our church. Together we sponsored a reading by award-winning lesbian poet Adrienne Rich. That evening Rich told us, “Lesbians and gay men have confronted mortality. We have mourned our friends and lovers together and we have stitched an extraordinary quilt of memory together . . . I think that the coming together of Jewish and Christian, lesbian and gay and straight congregants is an important part of this. I also think that the coming together those of us who are non-congregants with you is very important.”

Making this kind of connection — between Jew and Christian, female and male, gay and straight, black and white, parent and child — is what eschatological living is all about. With the end in sight, we do more to savor and value life, including the people we once viewed as hopelessly different from ourselves. As a church with AIDS, we try to embody eschatological living. AIDS is killing us at the same time that it heals us.

This must be the vision Steven Clover was talking about when he told us, “Heaven has as much to do with life before death as with life after death.”

And it must be the vision Rich meant to convey when she wrote the poem that has become a kind of creed for our church:

My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.

This must be what Jesus meant when he said, “Behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”

How is HIV Transmitted?

HIV enters the body through open cuts, sores, or breaks in the skin; through mucous membranes, such as those inside the anus or vagina; or through direct injection. There are several ways by which this can happen:
Sexual contact with an infected person. This is the primary focus of this lesson and is reviewed in greater detail in the following sections.
Sharing needles, syringes, or other injection equipment with someone who is infected.

Mother-to-child transmission. Babies born to HIV-positive women can be infected with the virus before or during birth, or through breastfeeding after birth. More information about HIV and pregnancy can be found in this lesson.

Transmission in health care settings. Healthcare professionals have been infected with HIV in the workplace, usually after being stuck with needles or sharp objects containing HIV-infected blood. As for HIV-positive healthcare providers infecting their patients, there have only been six documented cases, all involving the same HIV-positive dentist in the 1980s.

Transmission via donated blood or blood clotting factors. However, this is now very rare in countries where blood is screened for HIV antibodies, including in the United States.

Since the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, new or potentially unknown routes of transmission have been thoroughly investigated by state and local health departments, in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). To date, no additional routes of transmission have been recorded, despite a national system designed to detect unusual cases.