HIV Infection

HIV Infection

HIV is not transmitted through air, food, or water or through everyday social contact, such as shaking hands, sneezing, touching, and swimming. For a person to become infected with HIV, the virus must enter the bloodstream. As such, there are a limited number of ways that a person can transmit or become infected by HIV.

The following activities can place a person at high-risk for HIV infection:

• engaging in unprotected sexual intercourse (anal or vaginal);
• sharing sex toys;
• sharing needles or equipment for injecting drugs or steroids; and
• mother-to-child transmission during pregnancy, delivery, and breast-feeding.

HIV cannot be transmitted in the following ways:

• shaking hands, hugging;
• coughing, sneezing;
• giving blood;
• using swimming pools, toilet seats;
• sharing eating utensils, water fountains;
• mosquito and other insect bites;
• animal bites.

The following activities pose a low risk for contracting the HIV infection, but they still carry a risk. They pose a high risk when one of the partners has a pre-existing infection that resulted from a previous sexual experience or contact with infected blood.

• Unprotected oral sex poses a lower risk for HIV transmission, but a higher risk for causing other sexually transmitted infections, such as chlamydia, gonorrhea, herpes, genital warts (HPV), and syphilis.
• Kissing, in almost all circumstances, has no risk of HIV transmission. However, kissing with the exchange of blood (when there are bleeding cuts, open sores, or ulcers present in the mouth) can still carry a low risk for HIV transmission.
• Reusing or sharing needles for tattooing, skin piercing, electrolysis, or acupuncture carry a low risk for HIV transmission and a high risk for the transmission of other blood-borne infections, such as INK hepatitis B and hepatitis C.
• Exposure to blood and bodily fluids in an occupational setting (for example, in an emergency response or a medical environment) carries a low risk if infection-control precautions are followed. However, the transmission risk is higher in an occupational setting if precautions are not followed, or if the skin is punctured while being exposed to bodily fluids.

Even without treatment, it can take many years for a person infected with HIV to develop noticeable symptoms. That is why people can be unaware that they are infected with HIV. The Agency estimates that, at the end of 2008, 26% of the people in Canada who were living with HIV did not know they were infected. If people have HIV and do not know it, they may unknowingly infect others by not taking proper precautions during sex, or while injecting drugs or steroids. The only way to confirm if you are infected is through a blood test.