Know Your HIV Status

Know Your HIV Status

Get Tested

• Anyone who’s ever been sexually active, or ever injected drugs (even if only once) should be tested for HIV.
• If you’re infected, you can get medical treatment to feel better and live longer. You can also protect others from becoming infected.
• If you’re pregnant or planning pregnancy, knowing your HIV status can save your baby’s life. Without medication, a mother can pass HIV to her baby. But if you have HIV and get medication, you can improve your own health and greatly reduce the chance that your baby will get infected.
• If you’re HIV-positive, tell anyone you’re going to have sex with before you have sex (even if they don’t ask!).

Protect Yourself and Others

• Not having sex and not shooting drugs are the only ways to be 100% certain you won’t get infected with HIV.
• If you are sexually active, you can reduce your risk of getting or spreading HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) by having sex only in a mutually monogamous relationship with a partner you’re sure is not infected.
• If you are having sex outside of such a relationship, you can protect yourself and others by:
  • Always using a latex condom whenever you have sex – vaginal, anal, or oral.
  • Never having anal sex without a condom. Unprotected anal sex is the greatest sexual risk for spreading HIV.
  • Limiting the number of people you have sex with. The more partners you have, the higher your risk. Having sex with people you don’t know greatly increases your risk.
  • Avoiding alcohol and drugs when you have sex. Being high makes it much harder to remember to use condoms.
• If you shoot drugs, use a new sterile needle and works every time. Never share your needle or your works. If you have to share, clean the kit with bleach.