june 12

happy birthday
happy anniversary
happy independence day

pabaon

hiv/aids like human rights does not discriminate. anyone can have it regardless of age, sex, class, civil status, religion, political belief, or what have you.

there are four major modes of transmission, through blood (90% chances), sexual intercourse (up to 1%), injecting drug use (10%) and mother-to-child before, during and after birth (up to 50%). but sexual intercourse remains the most common mode, heterosexual intercourse tops the list, then homosexual, followed by bisexual.

hiv can be found in all body fluids but only four kinds have been found to have enough concentration that can cause transmission, blood, seminal fluid, vaginal secretion and breastmilk.

you need to drink a bucketful (about 8 gallons) of saliva of an hiv+ person to contract hiv. but what kind of person can secrete that much saliva? and even if one can, by the time an hiv+ fills a bucket with his or her saliva the virus will be dead because it can only survive outside the body for so long.

and what foolish person would drink another person's saliva. yes, you can say yuck.

can you share spoons, plates, glasses or even toilet with an hiv+? sure you can. what you have to watch out for are the opportunistic infections or diseases that are contagious, such as tuberculosis or pneumonia. but regardless whether a person is hiv+ or not, he or she can have contagious infections.

can you have sex with an hiv+ person? yeisss, there are safe ways of having sex. well, fyi only. you dont have to try it, not even with a non-carrier.

it is said that in islamic countries there is low account of hiv infection. this is more because of the culture of silence. it does not necessarily mean that they are less susceptible to the virus. lack of information is not tantamount to lack of infection.

must we be afraid of hiv+ people? no. they're just as human as we are.

is it always their fault that they have the virus? uhhh, it can be a tricky question... i think that depends from person to person. some people, even if they have enough and correct information, still engage in risky behaviours. but for many (and by many we're talking of millions), they have the virus either because they lacked the correct information and did not know how to prevent it; they were born with it; the virus was forcibly given to them. sad no?

so wherever you go, take this with you as an additional protection, even if according to UNAIDS, hiv infections have peaked in the 1990s and have already stabilised after 25 years, but remains an 'exceptional threat' nonetheless.

pasalubong!!!! :-)