Outpatient ServicesAIDS Risk Reduction Outreach Worker Program
What is HIV/AIDS?
Human - it only exists in humans
Immunodeficiency - it destroys the body's immune system
Virus - a germ that causes disease
HIV slowly destroys the body's ability to fight disease as it directly attacks the main line of defense, the immune system. It may take 8-10 years for symptoms to appear and the HIV-infected person may look and feel absolutely healthy. Or, the person may initially experience lingering flu-like symptoms, night sweats, unexplained weight loss and/or fatigue as a few examples. The symptoms may then disappear and the person will once again look and feel absolutely healthy.
When a person contracts an opportunistic infection (the infection takes advantage of the opportunity presented by the body's weakened immune system) they are considered to have moved farther along the progression of the disease to AIDS (Acquired Immuno Deficiency syndrome). Opportunistic infections - pneumonia, a variety of cancers, other viruses cluster closer and closer together and further weaken the immune system.
Each persons immune system is affected differently and is dependent on many variables - life style, genetics, age, etc. The medical community has made many hopeful breakthroughs in the management and care of HIV infected people, but it remains an incurable and challenging disease with no vaccine yet available.
