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Safe sex is sexual activity using methods or contraceptive devices to reduce the risk of transmitting or acquiring sexually transmitted infections (STIs), especially HIV. "Safe sex" is also sometimes referred to as safer sex or protected sex to indicate that some safe sex practices do not eliminate STI risks. It is also sometimes used colloquially to describe methods aimed at preventing pregnancy that may or may not also lower STI risks.
The management of HIV/AIDS normally includes the use of multiple antiretroviral drugs as a strategy to control HIV infection. There are several classes of antiretroviral agents that act on different stages of the HIV life-cycle. The use of multiple drugs that act on different viral targets is known as highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). HAART decreases the patient's total burden of HIV, maintains function of the immune system, and prevents opportunistic infections that often lead to death. HAART also prevents the transmission of HIV between serodiscordant same-sex and opposite-sex partners so long as the HIV-positive partner maintains an undetectable viral load.
HIV/AIDS originated in Africa during the early 20th century and has been a major public health concern and cause of death in many African countries. AIDS rates varies significantly between countries, though the majority of cases are concentrated in Southern Africa. Although the continent is home to about 15.2 percent of the world's population, more than two-thirds of the total population infected worldwide – some 35 million people – were Africans, of whom 15 million have already died. Eastern and Southern Africa alone accounted for an estimate of 60 percent of all people living with HIV and 70 percent of all AIDS deaths in 2011. The countries of Eastern and Southern Africa are most affected, AIDS has raised death rates and lowered life expectancy among adults between the ages of 20 and 49 by about twenty years. Furthermore, the life expectancy in many parts of Africa is declining, largely as a result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic with life-expectancy in some countries reaching as low as thirty-nine years.
Microbicides for sexually transmitted infections are pharmacologic agents and chemical substances that are capable of killing or destroying certain microorganisms that commonly cause sexually transmitted infection.
HIV-positive people, seropositive people or people who live with HIV are people infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus which if untreated may progress to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).
Criminal transmission of HIV is the intentional or reckless infection of a person with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). This is often conflated, in laws and in discussion, with criminal exposure to HIV, which does not require the transmission of the virus and often, as in the cases of spitting and biting, does not include a realistic means of transmission. Some countries or jurisdictions, including some areas of the U.S., have enacted laws expressly to criminalize HIV transmission or exposure, charging those accused with criminal transmission of HIV. Other countries charge the accused under existing laws with such crimes as murder, manslaughter, attempted murder, assault or fraud.
Male circumcision reduces the risk of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission from HIV positive women to men in high risk populations.
Oral sex, sometimes referred to as oral intercourse, is sexual activity involving the stimulation of the genitalia of a person by another person using the mouth. Cunnilingus is oral sex performed on the vulva, while fellatio is oral sex performed on the penis. Anilingus, another form of oral sex, is oral stimulation of the anus.
Serosorting, also known as serodiscrimination, is the practice of using HIV status as a decision-making point in choosing sexual behavior. The term is used to describe the behavior of a person who chooses a sexual partner assumed to be of the same HIV serostatus in order to engage in unprotected sex with them for a reduced risk of acquiring or transmitting HIV/AIDS.
Abstinence, be faithful, use a condom, also known as the ABC strategy or abstinence-plus sex education, also known as abstinence-based sex education, is a sex education policy based on a combination of "risk avoidance" and harm reduction which modifies the approach of abstinence-only sex education by including education about the value of partner reduction safe sex and birth control methods. Abstinence-only sex education is strictly to promote the sexual abstinence until marriage, and does not teach about safe sex or contraceptives. The abstinence-based sex education program is meant to stress abstinence and include information on safe sex practices. In general terms, this strategy of sex education is a compromise between abstinence-only education and comprehensive sex education. The ABC approach was developed in response to the growing epidemic of HIV/AIDS in Africa, and to prevent the spread of other sexually transmitted diseases. This approach has been credited by some with the falling numbers of those infected with AIDS in Uganda, Kenya and Zimbabwe, among others. From 1990 to 2001 the percentage of Ugandans living with AIDS fell from 15% to between 5 and 6%. This fall is believed to result from the employment of the ABC approach, especially reduction in the number of sex partners, called "Zero-Grazing" in Uganda.
The Special Program of Assisted Reproduction (SPAR) is a program offered to HIV discordant couples (serodiscordant) at the Bedford Research Foundation's clinical laboratory. The program takes advantage of ART procedures to assist couples achieve a pregnancy who would otherwise risk transmitting the father's HIV infection to the mother and the child through intercourse.
A sexually transmitted infection (STI), also referred to as a sexually transmitted disease (STD) and the older term venereal disease (VD), is an infection that is spread by sexual activity, especially vaginal intercourse, anal sex, oral sex, or sometimes manual sex. STIs often do not initially cause symptoms, which results in a risk of passing the infection on to others. Symptoms and signs of STIs may include vaginal discharge, penile discharge, ulcers on or around the genitals, and pelvic pain. Some STIs can cause infertility.
HIV/AIDS in Lesotho constitutes a very serious threat to Basotho and to Lesotho's economic development. Since its initial detection in 1986, HIV/AIDS has spread at alarming rates in Lesotho. In 2000, King Letsie III declared HIV/AIDS a natural disaster. According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) in 2016, Lesotho's adult prevalence rate of 25% is the second highest in the world, following Eswatini.
HIV prevention refers to practices that aim to prevent the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). HIV prevention practices may be undertaken by individuals to protect their own health and the health of those in their community, or may be instituted by governments and community-based organizations as public health policies.
How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach is a 1983 manual by Richard Berkowitz and Michael Callen, under the direction of Joseph Sonnabend, to advise men who have sex with men (MSM) about how to avoid contracting the infecting agent which causes AIDS. It was among the first publications to recommend the use of condoms to prevent the transmission of STDs in men having sex with men, and has even been named, along with Play Fair!, as one of the foundational publications in the advent of modern safe sex.
Since reports of emergence and spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the United States between the 1970s and 1980s, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has frequently been linked to gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) by epidemiologists and medical professionals. It was first noticed after doctors discovered clusters of Kaposi's sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia in homosexual men in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco in 1981. The first official report on the virus was published by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) on June 5, 1981, and detailed the cases of five young gay men who were hospitalized with serious infections. A month later, The New York Times reported that 41 homosexuals had been diagnosed with Kaposi's sarcoma, and eight had died less than 24 months after the diagnosis was made.
HIV in pregnancy is the presence of an HIV/AIDS infection in a woman while she is pregnant. There is a risk of HIV transmission from mother to child in three primary situations: pregnancy, childbirth, and while breastfeeding. This topic is important because the risk of viral transmission can be significantly reduced with appropriate medical intervention, and without treatment HIV/AIDS can cause significant illness and death in both the mother and child. This is exemplified by data from The Centers for Disease Control (CDC): In the United States and Puerto Rico between the years of 2014–2017, where prenatal care is generally accessible, there were 10,257 infants in the United States and Puerto Rico who were exposed to a maternal HIV infection in utero who did not become infected and 244 exposed infants who did become infected.
Multiple sex partners is the measure and incidence of engaging in sexual activities with two or more people within a specific time period. Sexual activity with MSP can happen simultaneously or serially. MSP includes sexual activity between people of a different gender or the same gender. A person can be said to have multiple sex partners, when the person have sex with more than one person at the same time. Another term, polyamorous, is a behavior and not a measure describing multiple romantically sexually or romantically committed relationships at the same time.
The first case of HIV in a woman was recorded in 1981. Since then, numerous women have been infected with the HIV/AIDS virus. The majority of HIV/AIDS cases in women are directly influenced by high-risk sexual activities, injectional drug use, the spread of medical misinformation, and the lack of adequate reproductive health resources in the United States. Women of color, LGBTQ women, homeless women, women in the sex trade, and women intravenous drug users are at a high-risk for contracting the HIV/AIDS virus. In an article published by the Annual Review of Sociology, Celeste Watkins Hayes, an American sociologist, scholar, and professor wrote, "Women are more likely to be forced into survival-focused behaviors such as transactional sex for money, housing, protection, employment, and other basic needs; power-imbalanced relationships with older men; and other partnerings in which they cannot dictate the terms of condom use, monogamy, or HIV." The largest motivator to become part of the sex trade was addiction, the second largest being basic needs, and the third was to support their children/family.
The Swiss Statement, or the Swiss Consensus Statement, was an announcement published in January 2008 by the Swiss Federal Commission for AIDS/HIV outlining the conditions under which an HIV-positive individual could be considered functionally noncontagious—namely, adherence to antiretroviral therapy, a sufficiently low viral load, and a lack of any other sexually transmitted diseases. While lacking the backing of complete, fully randomized clinical studies, the Commission felt the contemporary evidence for non-contagiousness for people on antiretroviral treatment was nonetheless strong enough to warrant official publication.
References
- ↑ (Smith, Raymond. "Couples" . Retrieved 8 August 2006.)
- ↑ Makwe, Christian C., and Osato F. Giwa-Osagie. “Sexual and Reproductive Health in HIV Serodiscordant Couples.” African Journal of Reproductive Health / La Revue Africaine De La Santé Reproductive, vol. 17, no. 4, 2013, pp. 99–106. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24362091.
- ↑ Grace Kimemia G (June 2019). "Perceptions of pregnancy occurring among HIV-serodiscordant couples in Kenya". Reproductive Health. 16 (85): 85. doi: 10.1186/s12978-019-0751-4 . PMC 6582525 . PMID 31215447.