What happens after a person is infected with HIV?
It is important to understand that once a person has contracted HIV they will react to the infection in an individual way. There is no certainty about what will happen to a person’s health because so many different factors can be involved. Since the reaction to HIV infection is so varied, the use of the term ‘stages’ in describing the progress of HIV and AIDS is no longer considered very useful. For example, not all people will progress through a ‘stage 3’, and many people will experience symptoms of ‘stage 4’ infection but not be described as ‘having AIDS’ for many years. A better method of explaining the progress of HIV to AIDS is to think in terms of categories of HIV illness.
