Your Risk of HIV Infection

Your Risk of HIV Infection
Certain Conditions, Circumstances, and Behaviors Can Increase Your Risk

What is your risk of HIV infection? Certain conditions, circumstances, and behaviors can increase your risk of HIV infection. There are conditions and behaviors that make it easier for HIV to be transmitted from person to person. Without taking the proper precautions or being aware of high risk behavior, your risk of HIV can increase. Some of the more common ways your risk of HIV infection increases include:

• Being Coinfected With Syphilis
People with syphilis may have open sores on their genitals that provide a route for HIV to enter the body when engaging in unprotected sex.

A Guide to Syphilis

• Your Sexual Partner is in the Acute Stages of HIV Infection
The acute phase of HIV infection is characterized by very high HIV activity and very high viral loads. Having unprotected sex with someone in the acute stage of HIV increases the exposure to activily replicating HIV, in turn increasing the risk of HIV transmission.

What is Acute HIV?

• Either Partner Has a Weakened Immune System
The body's immune system protects us from illness, infection, and disease. Anytime that protection is weakened, the body is at increased risk of illnesses and infections, including HIV. If either partner in a sexual relationship has a weakened immune system, that person becomes more at risk for HIV.

Understand the Immune Response

• When Either Partner has an Open Wound
Open wounds provide a portal of entry for HIV. In other words, any open wound or break in the skin can allow HIV to enter the body

• The Presence of a Large Quantity HIV Infected Blood
Large quantities of HIV infected blood exposes the body to an increase number of active HIV, making HIV infection easier. These large quantities of infected blood can occur during sex due to mechanical trauma of the sexual structures or during delivery of an HIV+ mom's newborn baby. Sharing syringes and needles can also expose people to large quantities of HIV infected blood.

What Are The Riskiest Behaviors?

Source: AIDS Infonet Fact Sheet 152 - "How Risky is It?"; October 25, 2005.

HIV/AIDS Among Hispanics

HIV/AIDS Among Hispanics
A Growing Problem Among the Hispanic Population

While HIV does not discriminate among different races, genders, or ethnicities, certain populations are carrying a larger burden of the HIV epidemic than others. The Hispanic population is seeing their HIV population continue to grow and become a large proportion of the new HIV cases. Let's take a look at the HIV epidemic and see the impact of HIV/AIDS among Hispanics.

Cumulative Effects of HIV/AIDS in the Hispanic Community
• Although Hispanics make up only about 14 percent of the population of the United States and Puerto Rico, they account for 18 percent; almost 164,000 of the more than 886,500 AIDS cases diagnosed since the beginning of the epidemic.

AIDS in the Hispanic Community

• By the end of 2002, nearly 88,000 Hispanics had died of AIDS.
• Among people given a diagnosis of AIDS since 1994, a smaller proportion of Hispanics (61 percent), compared with whites (64 percent) and Asians/Pacific Islanders (69 percent), were alive after 9 years.
• The proportion of surviving Hispanics was larger than the proportions of surviving American Indians and Alaska Natives (58 percent) and African Americans (55 percent).
• Hispanics accounted for more than 8,000, or 20 percent, of the more than 42,000 new AIDS diagnoses in the United States in 2002.
• Of the rates of AIDS diagnoses for all racial and ethnic groups, the second highest was the rate for Hispanics. Here is the breakdown:
1. African Americans - 76.4 cases per 100,000 people
2. Hispanics - 26.0 per 100,000 people
3. American Indians and Alaska Natives - 11.2 per 100,000 people
4. Whites - 7.0 per 100,000 people
5. Asians and Pacific Islanders - 4.9 per 100,000 people
• The 76,052 Hispanics living with AIDS accounted for 20 percent of all people in the United States living with AIDS

HIV in the Hispanic Community

• Hispanics accounted for 13 percent of new HIV/AIDS diagnoses reported in the 30 areas with long-term, confidential name-based HIV reporting in the United States.
• From 1999 through 2002, the number of new HIV/AIDS diagnoses increased by 26 percent among Hispanics in the 30 areas.
• Most Hispanic men are exposed to HIV through sexual contact with other men, followed by injection drug use and heterosexual contact.
• Most Hispanic women are exposed to HIV through heterosexual contact, followed by injection drug use.

Statistics provided by The Centers of Disease Control, 2004 - Updated Oct. 2007.