Manchester Student Stop Aids Society

Event

	Information

News and Events

01.October.2008

Our first meeting this year. It will be a chance for us to explain Stop AIDS further as well as planning our future events and discussing how you can become more involved with our society

08.October.2008

Film showing of "Yesterday". It is an Oscar nominated film and follows the life of a young Zulu woman and her daughter in rural South Africa as she contracts HIV and struggles to survive and aptly describes the stories of many who get HIV.

16.October.2008

we are hosting speakers from Zambia, Uganda and the USA who will talking about their powerful personal experiences of HIV and their roles in the fight to achieve universal access by 2010.

AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

What Causes Aids?

AIDS is caused by a virus called HIV, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. If you get infected with HIV, your body will try to fight the infection. It will make "antibodies," special molecules to fight HIV.

How do You get HIV

Most people get the HIV virus by having unprotected sex with an infected person, sharing a needle (shooting drugs) with someone who's infected or being born when their mother is infected, or drinking the breast milk of an infected woman. There are no documented cases of HIV being transmitted by tears or saliva, but it is possible to be infected with HIV through oral sex or in rare cases through deep kissing, especially if you have open sores in your mouth or bleeding gums.

What happen...

If you are HIV positve? You might not know if you get infected by HIV. Some people get fever, headache, sore muscles and joints, stomach ache, swollen lymph glands, or a skin rash for one or two weeks. Most people think it's the flu. Some people have no symptoms.

The virus will multiply in your body for a few weeks or even months before your immune system responds. During this time, you won't test positive for HIV, but you can infect other people. When your immune system responds, it starts to make antibodies. When this happens, you will test positive for HIV.

After the first flu-like symptoms, some people with HIV stay healthy for ten years or longer. But during this time, HIV is damaging your immune system.

How do you know...

if you have got Aids? HIV disease becomes AIDS when your immune system is seriously damaged. There is an "official" list of these opportunistic infections put out by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The most common ones are: pneumocystis pneumonia (a lung infection), Kaposi's sarcoma (a skin cancer), Cytomegalovirus (an infection that often affects the eyes) and Candida (a fungal infection that can cause thrush (a white film in your mouth) or infections in your throat or vagina).

Is there a Cure?

There is no cure for AIDS. There are drugs that can slow down the HIV virus, and slow down the damage to your immune system. There is no way to "clear" the HIV out of your body.

Taken from: http://www.aids.org/