Can HIV be spread through kissing?

According to media reports, a new HIV/Aids test that uses saliva instead of blood is set to be introduced in Kenya.

Blood tests have long been used to detect HIV in humans, leading many to believe the virus is only found in blood.

Previous research showed the virus that causes Aids was so tiny that it could not pass from one person to another through other bodily fluids other than blood. Therefore, people believed that saliva could not be used to test for HIV.

I attended seminars several years ago where epidemiologists asserted that research findings then held that skin pores were so tiny the Aids virus could not travel or flow through them.

It was, therefore, impossible for the virus to successfully migrate from an HIV-positive person to an HIV-negative person if any of their bodily fluids came into contact with the skin.

circumcision

These facts have been behind the drive for circumcision and the use of condoms because semen and vaginal fluids have always been thought to be the ones that are most likely to cause infection.

Therefore, the detection of the virus by use of saliva means that it can effortlessly pass from an infected partner to another through kissing. This shows that, contrary to what we were told before, HIV is present in saliva.

In the early days of HIV and Aids, people, doctors included, feared touching the bodies of victims who had died of Aids-related complications.

Nobody knew much of the way the disease was transmitted so care had to be taken in disposing of the dead.

This usually meant that a body was put in a bag (sometimes a polythene bag would suffice) before burial.

Thanks to subsequent research, the stigma associated with the disease reduced considerably. Relatives and friends of patients with Aids no longer fear or are discriminated against.

transmission

But if saliva can be used to detect HIV, it means that scientists have not conclusively established the modes by which it can be transmitted.

The National Aids/STI Control Programme needs to clarify whether saliva is a conduit through which HIV can be transmitted.

— Kennedy Buhere, via e-mail