New Faces of HIV/AIDS
PAGE 8
The women Philippe infected say they weren't especially worried about HIV/AIDS because they didn't fit the profile of someone at risk and they believed Philippe to be the picture of health. According to Dr. Kimberly Smith, an infectious disease specialist at Chicago's Rush Medical Center, this is a common misperception. "You can't look at someone and tell that they have HIV," she says.
Dr. Smith says she is seeing increasing numbers of women in their midlife and senior citizens contracting HIV/AIDS. "We're talking about older men and women who are still healthy and who are sexually active but who don't see themselves as potentially at risk for HIV, so they're engaging in unprotected sex," she says. "The message really should be that it's not who you are, because unfortunately I think from the beginning of the epidemic people were made to believe that you have to be a drug user or promiscuous or a gay man. You don't have to be anything. What you have to do is have unprotected sex and be unlucky enough to come in contact with the wrong person."
To this day, the women don't know for sure when Philippe found out he was HIV positive or how he contracted it. They do know that he infected someone in 1997 and suspect he was infected during time he spent in jail.
Dr. Smith says she is seeing increasing numbers of women in their midlife and senior citizens contracting HIV/AIDS. "We're talking about older men and women who are still healthy and who are sexually active but who don't see themselves as potentially at risk for HIV, so they're engaging in unprotected sex," she says. "The message really should be that it's not who you are, because unfortunately I think from the beginning of the epidemic people were made to believe that you have to be a drug user or promiscuous or a gay man. You don't have to be anything. What you have to do is have unprotected sex and be unlucky enough to come in contact with the wrong person."
To this day, the women don't know for sure when Philippe found out he was HIV positive or how he contracted it. They do know that he infected someone in 1997 and suspect he was infected during time he spent in jail.
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