Before thinking about AIDS prevention, first you should think about the fact that AIDS is actually caused by HIV, and this means that this is the virus that people should try to avoid. For sure you have a lot of information on the human immunodeficiency virus.
Preventing AIDS and transmission
It is known that there are three main ways to contract HIV: sexual activities, transmission from the mother to the child and contracting the virus through blood. In case of each type of transmission there are several things that people could do to protect themselves.
Sexual transmission
In case you would like to make sure that you are preventing AIDS, there are some things that you could do to increase or eliminate the risk of infection. In case of sex you could stop having intercourse or to delay having sex for the first time as much as you can.
When it comes to AIDS prevention, you should try to have a monogamous relationship or to have few partners. Using condoms could also be effective. In this case we are referring to both male and female condoms in case they are correctly and consistently used.
Transmission by blood
Preventing AIDS is important in case of drug users who are sharing needles, because it is possible to get infected in case an HIV positive person uses the needle too. We all know that there will always be some addicted people, and they should be encouraged not to share needles.
There is also another way of HIV transmission when thinking about AIDS prevention: blood transfusion. Although this is a real danger, it happens very rarely to be infected, and the chances can be further reduced by screening all the donors for the infection or by treating the blood with heat.
Health care providers also have to be thinking about preventing AIDS because they are constantly working with blood. The best way to make sure that the staff won’t get infected is to implement universal precautions. According to this all the patients should be treated as if they were infected.
Transmission from mother to child
When thinking about AIDS prevention, you should know that a mother could pass the infection to the baby during labor, pregnancy and delivery. Also after giving birth it is possible to infect the little one through breastfeeding.
In order to reduce the chances of infection as a way of preventing AIDS, the pregnant woman should be given antiretroviral drugs during pregnancy and labor, and once the little one is born he or she should also be given the medication. The most effective methods involve taking the drug for a long period of time. Even one dose of the drug could reduce the chances of infection significantly.
You may see that when it comes to AIDS prevention, there are a lot of different situations that people have to think about and there are also numerous different measures that people could take to ensure their safety and the safety of others.
