How Do You Get HIV?
HIV is short for "Human Immunodeficiency Virus". You can get HIV through unprotected sex or by sharing needles or other equipment used to inject drugs.
Who Gets HIV?
Anybody can get HIV. HIV is a virus; once it gets into your body, it can make you sick. It does so if you are rich or poor; 14 years old or 70; black or white; gay or straight; married or single. It's what you do, not who you are, that puts you at risk for HIV.
How Long Does It Take To Feel A Symptom?
People can have HIV for 10 years or more and never show any symptoms. Other people can get symptoms within a short time after being infected. The only way you can tell if you have HIV is to get an HIV test.
How Long Will I Live With HIV?
If you keep your CD4 count up, keep your viral load down, take your HIV meds properly and live a healthy life, there's no reason to think that your life will be any shorter with HIV than it would have been without it. The latest information on life expectancy for HIVers shows that HIV-positive people who are on treatment can expect to live well into their 60s and beyond -- and the estimates keep getting closer to those of HIV-negative people as HIV meds become more and more effective.
Where Did HIV Come From?
The origins of HIV are still a little murky. Experts currently think that, about 100 years ago in Africa, an ancestor of HIV evolved into a form that jumped from monkeys to humans. The history of the global HIV pandemic is more recent, however: The world only began to pay attention to HIV in the early 1980s, when gay men in New York City and San Francisco began to die of a mysterious illness. The term "AIDS" -- which is what doctors call it when HIV disease becomes advanced -- wasn't coined until 1982, and the virus now known as HIV wasn't identified as the cause of AIDS until 1984.
