HOW DOES HIV/AIDS SPREAD: SKIN PIERCING AND MOSQUITO BITES

There are several cultural practices in India that involve skin piercing. These include piercing ears or nose for ornamental reasons, tattooing, circumcision, etc. At the moment, skin piercing is not one of the major routes of transmission of HIV infection in India. However, if the number of people with the infection were to increase in the general population, the risk is likely to be higher. This is why it is important to ensure that the equipment used for skin piercing is sterilised well. A large number of people prefer to get ears and nose pierced by traditional goldsmiths than medical professionals. Irrespective of the current level of risk, it is important to ensure that the instruments used by them are sterilised as per the recommended guidelines.

Many people believe that since mosquito bites transfer blood from one person to the

another, it can also spread HIV infection from an infected person to others. This is however not true. The amount of blood that a mosquito sucks while biting a person is very small. Thus, even if the virus were to enter the mosquito's body, the number of viruses will be too less to cause infection in others. Also, the HIV virus does not live outside human fluids. Mosquitoes can spread diseases such as malaria because the malarial parasite multiplies in the body of the mosquito and increases the number of parasites that can infect other people. HIV does not multiply outside the human body and therefore cannot increase in number in the mosquito's body.

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