NON-SEXUAL TRANSMISSION

OF AIDS

HIV, the virus believed to cause AIDS, spreads easily by bloodto-blood contact. Such contact can occur during sex (see card 63), but it is more often the reason underlying non-sexual transmission. Non-sexual blood-to-blood contact can infect people through unscreened blood transfusions (see card 49), wounds, tattooing, unscreened blood products such as the clotting factor given to hemophiliacs (see card 41), acupuncture treatment, and the piercing of ears for rings. Health-care workers using hypodermic needles can become infected through accidental "needle sticks" (see card 12) and recent research implicates unsterilized dental equipment as a blood-to-blood transmission point (see card 7). But the most common form of blood-to-blood infection is that incurred by sharing needles during recreational intravenous (IV) drug use. In the U.S., IV drug use accounts for approximately 1/4 of AIDS infections and is rising. While AIDS education has been effective in slowing the sexual transmission of the epidemic, health officials have had a harder time educating IV drug users for three reasons. First, because drug use is illegal, it has fostered a highly secretive subculture reluctant to reveal the means of HIV infection for fear of prosecution. Second, taking drugs, the process of getting high, causes people to lose inhibitions and they do not consider the risk of HIV either from the standpoint of sharing needles or having unsafe sex. Finally, some psychologists say that IV drug use is a form of self-destructive behavior; so those who shoot drugs don't worry about HIV any more than they worry about an overdose because their subconscious goal is a form of long-term suicide. Next Card 68: NEEDLE EXCHANGE PROGRAMS Help Stop HIV Transmission

NON-SEXUAL TRANSMISSION OF AIDS