How to prevent HIV/AIDS transmission?

In three main ways HIV can be transmitted :
A. Sexual transmission
B. Transmission through blood
C. Mother-to-child transmission

Who needs to prevent HIV?
Anyone can be infected with HIV, and so promoting widespread awareness of HIV through basic HIV and AIDS education is important for preventing all forms of HIV transmission. Specific programmes can target key groups who have been particularly affected by a country’s epidemic, for example children, women, men who have sex with men, injecting drug users and sex workers. Older people are also a group who require prevention measures, as in some countries an increasing number of new infections are occurring among those aged over 50.

HIV prevention needs to reach both people who are at risk of HIV infection and those who are already infected:

1. People who do not have HIV need interventions that will enable them to protect themselves from becoming infected.
2. People who are already living with HIV need knowledge and support to protect their own health and to ensure that they don’t transmit HIV to others - known as “positive prevention”.

Someone can eliminate or reduce their risk of becoming infected with HIV during sex by choosing to:

• Abstain from sex or delay first sex
• Be faithful to one partner or have fewer partners
• Condomise, which means using male or female condoms consistently and correctly
• Use new clean needle to transfer blood
• Do not share needle to transfer blood
• Do not take blood from one who is alredy infected by HIV
• HIV can be transmitted from a mother to her baby during pregnancy, labour and delivery, and later through breastfeeding. The first step towards reducing the number of babies infected in this way is to prevent HIV infection in women, and to prevent unwanted pregnancies.