HIV rates within the health district
Current Value
2.10
Definition
Story Behind the Curve
Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a chronic, potentially life-threatening condition caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). By damaging your immune system, HIV interferes with your body's ability to fight the organisms that cause disease. HIV is a sexually transmitted disease (STD). It can also be spread by contact with infected blood or from mother to child during pregnancy, childbirth or breast-feeding. Without medication, it may take years before HIV weakens your immune system to the point that you have AIDS. There's no cure for HIV/AIDS, but there are medications that can dramatically slow the progression of the disease. These drugs have reduced AIDS deaths in many developed nations.
This indicator shows the HIV cases per 100,00 people within the health district.
Partners
Local screening offices (doctors), Planned Parenthood and Utah Department of Health.
What Works
Today, more tools than ever are available to prevent HIV. Strategies such as abstinence (not having sex), limiting number of sexual partners, never sharing needles, and using condoms the right way every time you have sex. There are also HIV prevention medicines such as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP).
If you have HIV, there are many actions you can take to prevent transmitting it to others. The most important is taking HIV medicine (called antiretroviral therapy, or ART) as prescribed. If you take HIV medicine as prescribed and get and keep an undetectable viral load (or stay virally suppressed), you can stay healthy and have effectively no risk of transmitting HIV to an HIV-negative sex partner.