This document provides information about HIV/AIDS for 5th grade students. It defines HIV and AIDS, explaining that HIV weakens the immune system, making people vulnerable to opportunistic infections. It discusses how HIV is transmitted through unprotected sex, sharing needles, or from mother to child during birth or breastfeeding. While there is no vaccine or cure, the document outlines preventative measures like abstinence and safe practices.
6. AIDS is a disease that a person gets from someone else. The body of a person who has AIDS is no longer immune to, or safe from, attacking germs. Why are they no longer immune? The AIDS patient’s body is deficient or lacking something that helps the body fight off other diseases. In time, the person infected with the AIDS virus shows certain symptoms, or signs, of diseases that result from a lack of immune protection.
19. IV drug users are people who use needles to inject illegal drugs, such as heroin or cocaine, directly into their blood. Many drug users don’t sterilize , or clean, the needles they use. They often share those needles with others. Some of these drug users have the AIDS virus. When a dirty needle is shared, blood from the infected drug user mixes with blood from the user not already infected and the virus can pass from one user to another.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26. HIV/AIDS Time Line Over time, the infected person’s immune system breaks down Death This breaking down process may take anywhere from a few weeks to more than ten years. A person becomes infected with HIV .
27. Answer This! ____________ is an infection caused by a germ that rarely causes disease/death for a person with a normal immune system. Because the HIV virus has made the person’s immune system so weak, they are not able to fight off this “opportunistic disease” and they die. Pneumonia