Impact on your personal relationships
     Partners are likely to suffer the consequences of HIV infection and disease as much as the infected person, albeit indirectly. This is so even if partners know that they are not HIV infected themselves. Their lives are likely to experience the same kind of pressures and upheavals, and they can experience similar feelings of uncertainty, grief, loss and anger.
     Communication between the two partners and between partners and professional counsellors is important to foster understanding of the adjustments that will be needed. For example, adjustments in sexual behaviour are necessary to stop further transmission of infection. Counselling can also address the physical and psychological changes and needs that the partners will experience.
     If you have HIV, you have an opportunity to make others more aware of the disease. By educating others, you may decrease the prejudice against persons with HIV and AIDS. However, consider carefully to whom you reveal your HIV status. Misunderstanding and discrimination do exist, and can affect you and the ones you love. Again, professional counselling can help these issues.
     Often, families are the main source of care and support for HIV infected persons, and the type of care required may change depending on the stage of the infection. Counselling for family members, both as individuals and as a family unit, can be very important, particularly as the disease progresses.

The impact on your work life
    How your work life is impacted will depend on how you feel physically and mentally, and at what stage your infection is discovered. Experience has shown what persons with HIV infection, with or without symptoms, should keep working as long as possible. After the initial period of coming to terms with HIV infection, there usually comes a period of wanting to move on with life-and work can be an important part of this transition.
     Although you are not obliged to inform your employer and colleagues of your HIV status, certain circumstances may make it necessary for you to do so . If your job calls for you to travel, for exemple, you may need to go to countries where entry depends on a certificate that shows you are not HIV-infected. In addition, you may require certain vaccinations. Theoretically, you could become infected by the "live" but weakened pathogens in   
certain vaccines, particularly if your immune system has already been damaged by HIV. It is always best to consult your physician to determine the risks involved with vaccines or if alternatives exist.

Do not lose hope
     Maintaining the quality of your life is just as important as maintaining your physical health. Here are two resources that recognize the physical, psychological, spiritual and social needs of persons living with HIV and AIDS.

POZ Magazine and Body Positive