December 1, 2023 marks the 36th World AIDS Day. The theme of this year's campaign is "Uniting Social Forces to Fight AIDS Together".
AIDS is a chronic infectious disease with extremely high hazard and mortality rate, and the full name of medicine is Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). The condition can be summed up in three key words:
Acquired: Refers to the fact that the disease is not primary or congenital, but is caused by an external infection;
Weakened immune system: Common viruses usually destroy inside cells and stop when they are discovered by immune cells. However, the HIV virus attacks the human immune system, causing it to collapse, resulting in a greatly reduced human resistance to weak viruses and bacteria, which leads to various serious opportunistic infections and malignant tumors, and eventually death;
Syndrome: This condition results in a series of physical reactions, rather than a single definitive disorder.
AIDS is currently a chronic infectious disease that can but cannot be developed, and its course is divided into three stages:
Acute infection period: about 2 to 4 weeks after infection, symptoms such as fever, headache, sore throat, muscle and joint pain, rash, and swollen lymph nodes may appear;
Asymptomatic incubation period: lasts 6 to 8 years, during which immunity gradually decreases, but the body's defenses are still able to resist the virus attack;
The onset of AIDS: The immune system collapses completely, and various viruses, bacteria, and fungi can grow.
Please confront AIDS and eliminate prejudice and discrimination against it. There are three main ways in which AIDS is transmitted: blood-borne, sexually transmitted and mother-to-child transmission. Daily contacts, such as mosquito bites, hugging, shaking hands, eating together or using the same towel, do not transmit HIV.
If you have high-risk behaviors or suspect that you are infected with HIV, please go to a regular medical institution for testing in time. There is a window period in which HIV antibodies in the blood are not detected at the beginning of the virus infection, during which the antibody test is negative, but it is also infectious. The window period for antibody testing is usually 4 to 12 weeks, and the window period can be shortened to 1 week after infection with nucleic acid testing.
Prevention measures for HIV include: proper use of condoms and monosexual partners; refusal of drugs; non-formal medical services are not accepted; Avoid unnecessary blood exposure; Timely testing in the event of high-risk behaviors and active acceptance**; As well as raising awareness of self-protection and taking preventive measures. (Correspondent Yang Mengye).
*: Red Net.