-You too need to take the HIV test
Dear readers,
ARE YOU 60 and over, single through divorce or the death of a partner, and planning to getting married or start a new, stable relationship? Then, hear this.  Never mind your age, it is important for you to have the facts about HIV before beginning to date and have sex with someone new.
While many people over the age of 60 may not think themselves at risk of getting infected with HIV, the reality is that HIV does not discriminate, and increasingly, more sexagenarians (60 and over)  are being found to be Persons Living with HIV (PLHIV).
Mind you, our focus here today is not transmission through accidental means, but through sexual intercourse.  Therefore, if you were having sex outside of a mutually monogamous relationship and do not know your or the other person’s HIV status, you are at risk of HIV and need to take the test to determine your status.
The Geriatric Times recently published an interesting news feature titled:  ‘AIDS may escape diagnosis in older people’. 
In that article, the author, Joyce Baldwin, notes that very often, health care professionals may not consider an HIV/AIDS diagnosis when examining an older patient.

“What’s more,” she said, “it may be difficult to determine if dementia is HIV-related, or a sign of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and to discern that an infection is an opportunistic one linked to HIV, not an unrelated condition such as pneumonia or herpes zoster.”
She is of the opinion that the reason experts believe AIDS might be misdiagnosed or under-diagnosed in elderly patients is “perhaps because stereotypical thinking perpetuates the myth that seniors are not sexually active.”
To bolster this argument, she quotes Dr Marcia Ory, Chief of Behavioural Medicine and Public Health at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) of the National Institutes of Health as saying:  “If an older person presents with fatigue or illness, the symptoms are often attributed to age-related changes, rather than indications of a sexually transmitted disease.
“The person who presents may have no idea they’re infected [with HIV], and the healthcare provider looks at a 65-year-old woman, maybe a 70-year-old man, and they think of everything else before they think: ‘Could this be a case of HIV/AIDS?’
The assumption here, Ory says, “is that healthcare providers look at somebody 75 and don’t think sex, and don’t think drugs.” And although they may be right in most cases, she said, “clinicians would be surprised at what they would find out about some of their patients if they did an assessment.”
Invariably, older people (particularly women) in stable relationships assume themselves to be HIV-negative (even without taking a test),and, judging the men by their standards, overlook testing and go straight into the relationship.

Well, that could be one of the riskiest things to do. What you are, in effect, doing is trusting that person with your life, which might not be worth it.  Unfortunately, we have reliable accounts of persons having made that mistake, and who, to the time of their death, continue to regret it. 

In fact, there is circumstantial evidence that many mature men who test ‘positive’ have contracted HIV, not from mature women in their fifties and sixties, but from young women 15 – 35, who entered into those relationships for what they could get from those men (financial rewards).  This is so particularly if the men have a lot of money, and at the same time want to prove to themselves that they are ‘macho’.

Invariably, it was during those risky trystings with those young women that the men became infected. And, unlike those who come only for the money, HIV stays with you… ‘Till death will you part’.

Remember, it is not every 60-year-old or even those in their 70s who are merely looking for companionship at their age, but a good many are philandering. While respecting that there are many mature men who continue to be both faithful and cautious in their sexual relationships, we urge persons to let good sense prevail, and not allow themselves to become so carried away as to let ‘reason go out of the window’. Think and act responsibly.
As UNAIDS official, Dr. Paul DeLay aptly puts it: “A married woman who is faithful is at tremendous risk of HIV infection if she has a philandering husband.”

According to UNAIDS, while the ABC message (Abstain; Be Faithful or Use Condoms Consistently and Correctly) may be catchy, it does not automatically protect married women.  Countless numbers of women have died of AIDS-related causes, the vast majority of them monogamous wives infected by husbands.

Therefore, we urge you, male or female, if you are mature persons, planning to get married, or about to enter into a new, stable  relationship,  let good sense prevail. Ensure both parties take the test, and thereafter, continue to be faithful to each other.
Shirla