Working for Change In Your Community

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HealthWiki > Where There Is No Dentist > Chapter 12: HIV and Care of the Teeth and Gums > Working for Change In Your Community

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In this chapter:

 

In this chapter:

By teaching and talking about HIV, dental workers can play an important role in helping to stop its spread.

Treating people with HIV infection helps to prevent its spread.

You can help if you:

• Learn as much as you can about HIV, how it is spread, and how to prevent it.
• Share your knowledge about HIV with others in community meeting places — like schools, stores, religious meetings, restaurants and bars, and military bases.
• Teach people how to practice safer sex to stop the spread of HIV. Safer sex is when no body fluids pass from one person to another during sex.
• Educate people about the importance of using sterilized needles for injections. In hospitals and health centers, make sure your needles come out of a sealed, sterile packet. Set up needle exchange programs for injection drug users in your community.

Practice safer sex

Take steps to lower your risk of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) like HIV

• Find out if there is affordable testing for STIs near you and get tested with your partners.
• Use a condom each time you have sex, and help people learn to talk to their partners about using condoms.
• Explore other ways to have pleasure, such as touching genitals with the hands, and rubbing or massaging different parts of the body.
• Talk to your partners about their behaviors, including sex and drug use, so you can make informed decisions about protecting yourself.

If the whole community has good information about HIV and safer sex, people may feel more comfortable making changes in their sex lives to protect themselves. Although it can be difficult to speak openly about sex, it is necessary to help prevent the spread of HIV.

Reduce transmission through blood

• As a dental worker, never re-use a needle or syringe without sterilizing it first.
• Wear latex gloves on your hands any time you touch another person’s blood or body fluids.
• Do not accept a blood transfusion that has not been tested, and talk to people in your community about the importance of testing donated blood for HIV.
• Start a needle exchange program in your community, so that people who inject drugs can do this without risk of spreading HIV.

Understand your risk

blood transfusion

injection drug use with shared needles

sex in the anus without a condom

sex in the vagina without a condom

sex in the anus or vagina with a condom

oral sex (mouth on penis or vagina)

kissing or touching

Treat everyone with respect

All people have a right to be respected, including people who have HIV. Set an example in your community by supporting people with HIV, their partners, and their families. Some people think AIDS is a “disease of outsiders“ or of “bad” people. They think HIV does not affect “good” people like them. But HIV affects rich and poor people, men and women, people of all races and religions, gender identities, sexualities, and incomes.

HIV is not a curse or a punishment.

Many people are afraid to take the HIV test or seek treatment because they think they will be treated badly. We must all take care not to let our fear of HIV and AIDS make us treat people unfairly. Anyone who is ill should be cared for with kindness and respect.

As a health and dental worker, you and other community and religious leaders can help people with HIV get health services, housing and jobs. You can help people treat each other with respect, and you can encourage people who have HIV to become involved in their treatment and in their community’s activities. Remember, you can help support the human rights of people living with HIV or someone who people think is living with HIV. Discriminating against them violates their human rights.

Set an example and share good information

The example you set and the information you share will help fight the fear people have of knowing, touching or living with someone who has HIV. Make sure people know that HIV is not spread by ordinary daily contact. HIV is not spread by hugging, touching, holding or shaking hands, by dancing, using the toilet after someone with HIV, or eating food prepared by a person with HIV. People can share dishes, towels, and bed sheets and not become infected with HIV. Also, it is not possible to get infected from someone’s tears, sneeze or spit, or from a mosquito bite.

Other viruses such as measles or chicken pox are spread easily through the air. But HIV spreads only if certain body fluids of a person with HIV get inside another person.

As a health worker, you can help people make decisions based on good information and not fear. A good way to begin is to plan a meeting to discuss HIV with other health workers in your area or region and with someone from a regional HIV organization. This will enable them to provide accurate, consistent information to the people in their communities. They can also learn about the best ways to treat the infections that people with HIV often get.

A person with HIV can get sick very easily with many common health problems such as pain, cough, skin rashes, fever and diarrhea. For information about these problems, see Helping Children Live with HIV, Where There Is No Doctor, or another general medical book.

Follow your own advice

As a dental worker and health leader, you can have a great impact on your community’s health and well-being if you set a good example. It is not enough just to give health education talks and tell people how to behave. . As you talk to people about the importance of practicing safer sex, you must remember to also practice safer sex. A dental worker who does not practice safer sex can become infected with HIV and pass the virus to others.

Think of yourself as a teacher

As a dental worker, you will be able to improve the health of the people in your community and help prevent the spread of HIV if you think of yourself as a teacher. The knowledge you share can have a more lasting impact on the health and well-being of a community than your skills as a dental worker. By making connections with people and organizations working on different aspects of HIV, you will learn new information that can help you and your community. Contact local, regional, and national groups who work on HIV education and prevention, on providing service for people with HIV, and on expanding access to antiretroviral therapy (ART) and other medicines.

Help people with the resources you have, and think about where you might find more resources to help meet people's needs.

If all health workers can give the same correct, up-to-date information, it will help prevent the fear caused by wrong ideas about HIV. If their neighbors are not afraid of them, people with HIV — as well as those who care for them — can become more accepted in the community. Then they can help others understand every person’s real risk of getting HIV. So learn as much as you can about HIV and share the information with everyone.

Fight for improvements in the social and legal services available for people with HIV. Remember, the fight is against the conditions that lead to the spread of HIV, and not against people who have HIV.

Fight to end discrimination against people with HIV. Discrimination is an obstacle to care. It may stop people from coming for treatment and it may stop people from learning how to prevent the spread of infection.

This page was updated:17 May 2024