Singapore HIV

What is HIV Positive?

The long incubation period has earned the HIV/AIDS disease the sobriquet of being called the ‘silent epidemic’. It is because an individual could be infected with the disease for many years without showing any signs and symptoms. It is precisely why an infected person can infect another person since he or she is not aware that he or she has HIV/AIDS.

There are different phases that can divide the infection of HIV. The phases may be different from each other but in most cases, discerning their differences could be difficult. The various complications that may take place in the immune system of a person are determined by the state of health of the infected individual.

The benefit of antiretroviral therapy which allows an infected individual to live for a lot of years has categorized HIV/AIDS as a chronic disease. The symptoms of HIV/AIDS are very difficult to

determine, but there are common ones that usually appear to individuals infected by HIV/AIDS:

• Dementia
• Oral thrush caused by a yeast infection called Candida albicans
• A rare form of skin cancer called Kaposi’s sarcoma
• Recurring Herpes infections
• Lymphoma
• Fever with no known cause
• Mycobacterium avium infection
• Dry persistent cough
• Tuberculosis
• Diarrhea
• Gut or retinal cytomegalovirus infection
• Unexplained Weight loss. Once the immune system has been affected, infected individuals lose weight as the disease progresses.
• Pneumocystis pneumonia
• Extreme fatigue. Affected immune systems bring on extreme fatigue to most patients afflicted with the HIV/AIDS infection.
• Cerebral toxoplasmosis
• Skin infections that are bacterial in nature
• Night sweats
• Major complications due to the entry of opportunistic infections even from normally harmless ones

The infected individual may deceive everyone as he or she may look and remain in the best health for a long period without showing any symptoms even when the virus inside the body is already devastating his or her immune system. This is why HIV/AIDS is viewed by the medical group as a very deceiving and traitorous disease. It is also the reason why early diagnosis is difficult to make. There are numerous cases when it is at the terminal stage when patients can be accurately diagnosed which by this time the damage to the immune system is already very extensive that not even a partial treatment can repair it.

With the characterization that the HIV/AIDS has, it is extremely important for the public to be aware of it and the ways to prevent being infected with it. The traitorous nature of the infection where an individual is not even aware that he or she is already infected is the very thing that makes HIV/AIDS highly contagious and difficult to contain. Information of the disease needs to be widely spread more so to third world countries where the infection is most rampant.

In the light of the devastating effects that an HIV/AIDS could do to the immune system of a human body, the best way that this could be prevented from getting infected is to be vigilant at all times.