June 27th - the National HIV Testing Day

The National HIV Testing Day or NHTD, June 27th of each year, is an annual campaign coordinated by the National Association of People with AIDS or NAPWA to encourage people of all ages to take the test.

The organization says on its website that the HIV epidemic is real. 

According to nineandahalfminutes.org, for every nine and half a minute, one person in the U.S. gets infected with HIV. And today more than one million Americans live with HIV and over one million have been diagnosed with AIDS.

Of the infected people, 20 percent do not know they carry the deadly virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Although HIV treatments can extend a carrier's life significantly, there is no cure for the disease.  An estimated 14,000 people die each year from the disease in the U.S.

HHS.gov posted a link on its website on June 27 saying that President Obama gave a speech on video to address the importance of HIV testing.

The CDC recommends that everyone between the ages of 13 and 74 get tested for HIV at least once in their lifetime and those who are at high risk such as gay and bisexual men, injection drug users or people with multiple sexual partners should be tested once a year. 

Around the National HIV Testing Day, thousands of organizations nationwide offer HIV testing and host special NHTD events.

HIV destroys a person's immunity. Mild infections that pose no risk to healthy people may be a big challenge to the HIV carrier.

Early symptoms of HIV is the signs of some flu-like illness that occurs two to four weeks after becoming infected.  The symptoms include fever, headache, sore throat, swollen lymph glands and rash.

Late HIV symptoms include those with mild infections or chronic symptoms like swollen lymph nodes, diarrhea, weight loss, fever, and cough and shortness of breath.

When an AIDS develops, the patients can have soaking night sweets, shaking chills, fever, dry cough and shortness of breath, chronic diarrhea, headaches, blurred and distorted vision, and weight loss among others.

By David Liu