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AIDS is caused by a virus known as Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). The virus lives in your blood and eventually attacks your immune system (the part of your body that fights infection). A weakened immune system makes it difficult for your body to fight otherwise harmless infections. A series of infections and cancers take advantage of the immune system's inability to fight back. Once this happens, you are diagnosed with AIDS. A person infected with the virus can feel and look fine for many years. On average people will start showing symptoms of a weakened immune system within ten years of getting infected.
You can get HIV:
- By having unprotected sex with a person that has the virus.
- By sharing needles when shooting drugs, steroids, vitamins, or other substances with a person that has the virus. This includes sharing needles for "skin popping", tattooing, piercing and being blood brothers/sisters.
- By a mother who has the virus: passing it to her baby during pregnancy, during the birth process or during breast feeding.
HIV is not spread through casual contact such as: sneezing, coughing, shaking hands, hugging, and kissing. It also cannot be passed from toilet seats, dried blood, hot tubs, swimming pools, eating utensils, telephones, insect bites, or furniture. You cannot get HIV from donating blood.
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