Hi Steemians,

I am Christel and I live in France on an island called Corsica.
I hope I’m okay with my English. 😃 Many thanks to @lenadr for the translation assistance.
I really want to reach a lot of people, so writing in English is better.

Why are you talking about AIDS?

Until a few years ago, I was very much concerned about AIDS, the progress in terms of research, therapy and statistics. I was involved at the associative level. I was involved in shows, in a hospital, and in a children's ward with AIDS and tumors.
And when I lost friends, family, and loved ones, I decided to stop. I gave it all. Too much?
But for me in any case, despite the doctor’s advice, it was impossible for me to act differently, to behave differently.
I naively thought to myself, if we were better informed, we would succeed in winning the battle! Obviously, I was deluding myself.

I felt the urge to write this article after my discoveries on Google.
I don't know why, but yesterday I typed the word, AIDS. Maybe just to see--about seventeen years after I stopped my frantic quest for information on the subject--where we were, or perhaps for more intimate reasons. But what I read was so disturbing, irritating, angry, shocking... that I made my decision. I was going to write an article on AIDS.

I will use medical terms in the article, so I prefer to give you some definitions.
If you are familiar with these terms, so much the better, you can already move on!

• AIDS:
  Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.
• HIV:
  Human Immunodeficiency Virus.
• HIV-positive:
  An HIV-positive person refers to a patient who has contracted the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
• LYMPHOCYTES:
  It is one of the varieties of leukocytes (white blood cells).
• CD4 T CELLS:
  It's the target of HIV. Important at the level of AIDS, its rate determines the passage from seropositivity to declared AIDS, but I'll talk more about it because it's really important and many people don't understand.
• ANTIBODIES:
  Blood proteins, synthesized by immune system cells, in response to the penetration of an antigen into the body.
• ANTIGEN:
  Antigens are substances that are foreign to an organism and can trigger an immune response to eliminate them. They can be present during contamination by a microbe (viral, fungal, or bacterial), a toxin, or a pathology.
• IMMUNE SYSTEM:
  Immunity is the body's ability to defend itself against an infectious attack (bacteria, virus, or parasites), or a given disease.
• OPPORTUNISTIC DISEASES:
  These are the diseases that occur when the immune system has virtually disappeared.
• ART:
  AntiRetroviral treatment. ART can slow the course of the disease and may lead to a near-normal life expectancy.
  ^{Sources: Vulgularis Medical and personal education.}

I'm now going to get to the heart of the matter but I'm not going to give a medical course on AIDS, because that's not what I want!

Today I want two things:

• to inform as much as possible. It's no longer possible to read some of the things I've been able to read in 2017,
• and to prevent, because we still can't heal. I was also saddened that there is still a significant amount of contamination in the world.
  HIV is a communicable, not contagious disease.
  It is a fundamental notion and unfortunately, in 2017,we can see that bad ideas are still very much entrenched.

Look at the statistics I've read (source in french):

36.7 million people in the world living with HIV in 2016

1.8 million people were newly infected with HIV in 2016

1 million people died of AIDS-related illnesses in 2016

76.1 million people have been infected with HIV since the beginning of the epidemic

35 million people have died from AIDS-related illnesses since the beginning of the epidemic

How can you be infected with the AIDS virus?

SEXUAL:
During unprotected intercourse (male or female) with vaginal and/or anal penetration, and during oral sex (mainly if ejaculation is in the mouth).
BLOOD:
When sharing injection equipment, accidental injections with contaminated care equipment, and of course, as was the case with the tainted blood case, by transfusion (although I hope that there have never been any more of those cases).
FROM MOTHER TO CHILD:
During pregnancy, delivery, or breastfeeding.

These are the only three ways to get infected, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. What I mean is that we are not being mislead. As I have read, there is no other way of being infected and we have discovered everything about it!

There is no risk, therefore, of drinking from the glass, using a towel, kissing, or using the cutlery of an HIV-positive person.

But what exactly is HIV, AIDS, HIV-positive?

A Persian proverb says:

Ignorance is death; knowledge is life.

In the collective imagination, HIV and AIDS are often confused. Yet these are two different things.
This amalgamation, on a pathology that already carries many preconceived ideas, is often made by shortcuts or ignorance. And the fear that this generates is often at the expense of people living with HIV (and not AIDS!).

HIV

It is the virus responsible for AIDS, the ultimate stage of the disease in the absence of treatment for the virus. It attacks T4 lymphocytes and destroys them gradually.
In the event that HIV status is not detected/diagnosed, HIV progresses in four major phases:

1 Primary infection:
This is the progressive invasion of the organism by HIV until complete colonization of the body. Slowly, an immune response to fight the virus develops in the body, which will lead to a decrease in viral load after the initial peak of intense replication in the first weeks and months.
The viral load is extremely high, resulting in a very high risk of transmission. Antibodies appear between two and three weeks. These elements constitute the transition from HIV-negative to HIV-positive, or seroconversion.
Primo-infection can be accompanied by a variety of symptoms, such as flu-like or non flu-like symptoms.

2 The asymptomatic phase:
This is the period, between two and five years, during which there are not necessarily many symptoms felt.
The virus disrupts, attacks, and wears out the immune system. T4 lymphocytes are slowly dropping.

3 The acceleration phase:
The increase in viral replication, due to the exhaustion of immune control, causes a faster fall of CD4 T.

4 The AIDS phase:
Immune defenses have collapsed sufficiently to allow opportunistic diseases to develop. Without treatment, the evolution is quickly fatal. The AIDS stage is defined medically by the occurrence of an opportunistic disease in the person.
Today, the "AIDS phase" is no longer definitive or inevitable, thanks to effective access and ART.

AIDS

AIDS is the final stage in the natural history of the disease, when the consequences of HIV reach a point where the body can no longer defend itself against other so-called opportunistic diseases. Only when an HIV-positive person develops one of these characteristic diseases can he be said to have AIDS.

Without effective antiretroviral treatment, a person with AIDS becomes very vulnerable and unfortunately ends up dying from it. AIDS "kills" because it leaves room for other pathologies that attack the vital functions of the human body without the body being able to react. Although the risk of death at this stage is high, starting treatment can help to "get out" of an AIDS phase.
To tell you how true that is, my cousin decided not to fight anymore, a year after the death of her little boy, and to give up. When she told us about it, just four weeks later she had already developed brain cancer, an opportunistic disease, at a lightning speed.

Thank you very much for reading to the end.

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Sources in french: AIDES, SIDA INFO SERVICE, SIDA INFOS PLUS.