Some groups in this country do not know they are at risk of getting HIV. Knowing your risk is an important step in preventing infection.
Here are the stats from 2019*:
Although the overall number of new cases is going down, there is still work to be done.
36, 801 new diagnoses of HIV in the US and territories.
19% (6,999) of those were among women, girls, and people assigned female at birth.
Of those:
84% report sexual contact with the opposite sex
25-34-year-olds had the highest rate of new diagnoses: 27%
54% are Black or African American
How to Stay Healthy:
Know your status: get tested. (Site locator listed below)
Prevent infection: use condoms and/or take pre-exposure prophylaxis PrEP (the little blue pill, one pill once a day. Your primary care clinician can prescribe it. We even have a new shot that lasts a month!) Use clean supplies for injecting substances. Don’t share.
Prevent transmission: lower your viral load! Have you heard of Undetectable=Untransmissable U=U or Treatment as Prevention TasP?
HIV no longer has to make you terribly sick. You don’t have to stop being intimate or having fun. Medicine can lower the number of viral particles you have to such a low number that you feel well AND can’t give the virus to anyone else. Ask your clinician for more information. **Note that U=U medication doesn’t prevent giving or getting other sexually transmitted or bloodborne infections, so condoms are still needed for that, as are clean supplies if you inject substances.
We will cover barriers to testing and treatment in future posts. Stay tuned.
Be well. Stay nerdy.
Love,
Those Nerdy Girls
P.S. Don’t forget to drop your questions in our question box here.
* The CDC states that although 2020 numbers are available, they may be less reliable due to the inaccessibility of testing during the Covid-19 pandemic. Stay tuned for updated data.
All data collected were based on sex assigned at birth and included transgender people. For more information about transgender people, visit CDC’s
Resources:
National Women and Girls HIV Awareness Day
Testing and other prevention services locator
