Expert: Gorkey Gourab - 3/1/2010

Question
QUESTION: Hello sir.if a man say Mr.X do UNPROTECTED SEX of any kind (anal,vagianl or oral)with 100 another persons and it is sure that all these 100 persons are not hiv infected.Can this Man Mr.X become Hiv infected by doing this?please explain.thanx in advance.

ANSWER: Hello Ashish,

Answer to your question is “no”. In the scenario you explained, Mr. X can’t become HIV infected. Let us proceed for the explanations. According to AVERT (2010), like all sexually transmitted infections (STIs), HIV cannot be 'created', it is only passed on. If someone is sure that his/her partner does not have HIV, then there is no risk of acquiring it, even if s/he do have unprotected sex (whether it be vaginal, anal or oral).

Now there are two issues:
1. It is quite difficult to be certain that one’s HIV status due to long window period of HIV (the time from infection until a test can detect any change), which can be from two weeks to four weeks. Also, almost all diagnostic tests have limitations, and sometimes their use may produce erroneous or questionable results.
2. Also, although not with HIV, there runs the risk of being infected of other sexually transmitted diseases (if one’s partner has one)

Thanks for asking the question and please feel free to ask again for any sort of further queries or for other questions.

Sincere regards,
Gorkey

Note: Although the message is old - proper and consistent condom use is safer.

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Then How did this HIV/AIDS originated and spread among humans.How did it reached in india?

Answer
Dear Ashish,

Following are the answers to your well thought queries:

Origin of HIV & AIDS:

According to CDC (2009), the earliest known case of infection with HIV-1 in a human was deleted in a blood sample collected in 1959 from a man in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. (How he became infected is not known.) Genetic analysis of this blood sample suggested that HIV-1 may have stemmed from a single virus in the late 1940s or early 1950s.

However, few new studies indicate that the most pervasive global strain of HIV began spreading among humans as early as 1884, suggesting that growing urbanization in colonial Africa through the early 1900s set the stage for the current AIDS pandemic.

A research, led by Michael Worobey, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona in Tucson shows that the HIV virus spread from chimps to humans in southeastern Cameroon. Worobey said the resulting HIV epidemic among humans correlates to the growth of urban centers near this area, principally the present-day city of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which began as a colonial center for Belgium (ENS, 2008).

Case of India:

At the beginning of 1986, despite over 20,000 reported AIDS cases worldwide, India had no reported cases of HIV or AIDS (Bureau of Hygiene & Tropical Diseases, 1986; Ghosh T.K., 1986). Later in the year, India’s first cases of HIV were diagnosed among sex workers in Chennai, Tamil Nadu (Simoes, E.A. et al, 1987).

It was noted that contact with foreign visitors had played a role in initial infections among sex workers, and as HIV screening centres were set up across the country there were calls for visitors to be screened for HIV. Gradually, these calls subsided as more attention was paid to ensuring that HIV screening was carried out in blood banks (Kakar D.N. and Kakar S.N., 2001).

I apologize for being so late.

Take care and sincere regards,
Gorkey