You do not die from HIV/AIDS

Scratching head?  Now that I got your attention, HIV/AIDS does wreck chaos to your immunity system, but you do not die from it, but die from secondary and ordinary viruses such as TB, pneumonia, etc., that happily and easily enter your body and overwhelm you when your immunity security guards are destroyed by HIV/AIDS.

Since this week we are having an HIV/AIDS workshops, so you may find me talking about HIV/AIDS  more than once already.  But I thought this topic is very important and I want to share those things I learned, and maybe you, my dear readers, would benefit with the knowledge.  Maybe if I wrote this using my own layman words would make this more useful and easier.

HIV - Human Immunodeficiency Virus
AIDS - Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome

If you look at the words in the acronym above, and think about it.  HIV is a virus that destroys your human's natural immunity war machine. HIV is a smart virus that goes after your valuable T4 cells that your body produces to fight against foreigners that enter your body all the time.  The HIV attacks these good T4 cells by entering them, changing its internal DNA, and produces yet more HIV virus that leaves the damaged T4 searching for other good T4s in your blood stream.

AIDS is a syndrome that your body will display as the result.

Acute or initial infection (first 2-8 weeks after infected with HIV):
Your T4 cells rush to fight the HIV virus.  Your T4 cells lose the fight. But during this period, your body have not yet build up enough antibiotics to show up on HIV test, so you may be negative, but yet you are actually positive.  Usually you may have mild flu-like symptoms for 1-4 weeks (like sore throat, headache, fever, skin rash).  HIV reproduces rapidly and spreads to your other organs. Your flu-like symptoms would go away.  The irony is that you may turn out negative in an HIV test, you are the MOST infectious (10 times more infectious).

Sero-conversion (6-12 weeks after infection):
Finally HIV test will turn out positive.  Your immune response is still active and trying to get rid of HIV but failing miserably.

Asymptomatic HIV stage - Dormant/Latent Period (6-11 years or more):
During the dormant stage, there are no symptoms of HIV, but HIV continues to replicate rapidly throughout your body and its organs.  You are still infectious and can spread HIV to others through contact with body fluids even though you are less infectious than during the initial infection.

Symptomatic HIV stage (when started, lasts for months or years):
Your T4 counts finally start to drop significantly.  You have very little good T4 cells left in your immune system to fight ordinary viruses that enter your body at all times.  Although you should start as soon as you are tested negative for HIV, it is important now to practice healthy, self-care and nutrition and exercise to go along with your remaining T4 cells to help your body immune system, whatever is left, to fight common viruses (flu, TB, colds, etc.).  You should also try to avoid anyone else with contagious diseases.

AIDS! Advanced HIV Secondary Diseases:
Once your T4 counts have dropped to below 200/microlitre of blood, you just have too little or no T4 cells left in your immunity system to fight against anything.  Your body is no longer able to replace T4 cells anymore.  You start to catch simple viruses and get really sick from them.  Most prevailing (yet easily treatable for healthy humans) viruses that kill HIV positive you would be tuberculosis, pneumonia, bowel infection, meningitis, and cancers like non-Hodgkin's lymphoma etc.  Depending on how well you eat and self-care, you may get sick but beat them, but you will start to have body weight loss and wasting.

Death
Death occurs as your immune system quits and the viruses (not HIV) overtakes you.

So in conclusion, you do not die from HIV/AIDS.  You get infected with HIV, and with your body having such low immunity in later stages of AIDS, and simple and treatable viruses such as TB not HIV/AIDS are actually what would have killed you.  

Two myths I just learned, but there are going to be many more:  (1) you cannot get HIV by mosquitoes.  They draw your blood (when its HIV positive), the virus dies in the mosquito, and furthermore, mosquitoes does not INJECT other person's blood into another, but just its salvia. (2) HIV positive mothers CAN give birth to HIV negative babies, and there are ways to breast feed without transmitting the HIV virus (I will learn more about that later).

The old myth have always been around -- you cannot get HIV by hugging, sitting on the same toilet seat, and so forth.  Transmission occurs only when there are blood and bodily fluids contact between the HIV positive person to another through needles, sex, etc.

The red ribbon is a symbol for solidarity with HIV-positive people and those living with AIDS.