Your life matters and staying healthy is important. Staying healthy starts with getting tested for HIV and knowing your HIV status. CDC recommends that everyone between the ages of 13 and 64 get tested for HIV at least once as part of routine health care. People with certain risk factors should get tested more often. Some people are more likely to be at higher risk and should get tested at least once a year, including people with more than one sex partner, sexually active gay and bisexual men, people with other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and people who inject drugs.
Some gay and bisexual men may benefit from even more frequent testing (for example, every 3 to 6 months), depending on their risk. If you haven’t been tested for HIV in the past year, get tested for HIV, and encourage your partners to get tested too.
If you learn that you have HIV, the most important thing you can do is to take HIV medicine, called antiretroviral therapy (ART), as prescribed. ART is recommended for all people with HIV, regardless of how long they’ve had the virus or how healthy they are. ART can reduce the amount of HIV (viral load) in your body. Taking ART as prescribed can make your viral load so low that a test can’t detect it. This is called an undetectable viral load . If you keep an undetectable viral load, you can stay healthy for many years and will not transmit HIV through sex.
Not having sex is a 100% effective way to make sure you don’t get or transmit HIV through sex. If you’re sexually active, there are more tools available today to prevent HIV than ever before. Here’s what you can do:
If you’re HIV-negative, consider pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), taking HIV medicines as prescribed to prevent HIV infection. If taken as prescribed, PrEP is highly effective for preventing HIV from sex or injection drug use. But it’s much less effective if you don’t take it consistently.
If you’re HIV-negative, talk to your doctor right away (within 3 days) about post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) if you have a recent possible exposure to HIV.
Get tested and treated for other STDs and encourage your partners to do the same. Find an STD testing site.
If you have HIV, take HIV medicine, called antiretroviral therapy (ART) to get and keep an undetectable viral load.
If you’re taking ART, follow your health care provider's advice.
If your partner has HIV, encourage your partner to get and stay on treatment.
If you are HIV-negative and your partner with HIV has an undetectable viral load, you or your partner may want to use additional prevention.
If you keep using needles, syringes, or other injection equipment, here are some things you can do to protect yourself and others.
Use only your own new, sterile syringes and injection equipment each time you inject.
Use only your own sterile syringes. Never share syringes, needles, or other injection equipment. Be aware that HIV can survive in a used syringe for up to 42 days depending on temperature and other factors.
Use bleach to clean needles, syringes, cookers, and surfaces where drugs are prepared when you can’t get new ones. This may reduce the risk of HIV and hepatitis C but doesn’t eliminate it. Bleaching a used syringe may reduce the risk of HIV and hepatitis C but doesn’t eliminate it. Here are instructions on using bleach to clean your syringes..
Use sterile water to fix drugs. You can buy sterile water from a store. If you can’t get sterile water, use water that has been boiled for 10 minutes or clean tap or bottled water.
If you inject around other people, be careful not to get someone else’s blood on your hands, needles, syringes, or other injection equipment.
If you inject around other people, be careful not to get someone else’s blood on your hands or your needle or works.
Dispose of syringes and needles safely after one use. You can use a sharps container or another container like an empty bleach or laundry detergent bottle. Make sure to keep used syringes away from other people. Some communities have drop boxes where you can dispose of your used syringes safely.
