FRANCE 24 English published this video item, entitled “‘Don’t be afraid of yourself’: The importance of fighting stigma surrounding HIV • FRANCE 24” – below is their description.
This year’s World AIDS Day puts the spotlight on ongoing inequalities in the fight against HIV, the virus that impacts some 38 million people worldwide. Dr. Alexandra Calmy, the head of the HIV/AIDS Unit of Geneva University Hospitals, says the inequalities surrounding HIV/AIDS are much like those witnessed during the Covid-19 pandemic, with access to treatments and prevention spread unevenly across the world’s population. Forty years after the first case of HIV was detected, stigmatisation also remains a major obstacle to eradicating the virus. Dr. Calmy’s message for anyone worried they might have HIV is “don’t be afraid of yourself”.
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FRANCE 24 English YouTube Channel
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In This Story: HIV
The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of Lentivirus (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive.
Without treatment, average survival time after infection with HIV is estimated to be 9 to 11 years, depending on the HIV subtype. In most cases, HIV is a sexually transmitted infection and occurs by contact with or transfer of blood, pre-ejaculate, semen, and vaginal fluids. Research has shown (for both same-sex and opposite-sex couples) that HIV is untransmittable through condomless sexual intercourse if the HIV-positive partner has a consistently undetectable viral load.
Non-sexual transmission can occur from an infected mother to her infant during pregnancy, during childbirth by exposure to her blood or vaginal fluid, and through breast milk. Within these bodily fluids, HIV is present as both free virus particles and virus within infected immune cells.
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