It is not true that if you don’t practice sex you will have difficulty in producing in future. In fact, if you delay to have sex, you are avoiding acquiring STIs, HIV/AIDS and other consequences of sex that you cannot handle as a student. Infections now may even hinder you from having children in future. You do not have to practice now. When you are old enough and ready, it will automatically come and you will enjoy it.

It is normal for girls and women to have a vaginal discharge (a fluid or mucus stuff) that comes out of the vagina. All women have this vaginal discharge.

The purpose of the vaginal discharge is to keep the vaginal area moist and to protect against damage or infection. The discharge comes mainly from the glands in the cervix (the neck of the womb) and is slightly acidic which helps to keep the infections at bay.

Normal vaginal discharge should not be thought of as unclean or unhealthy. It is part of the self-cleansing mechanism of the vagina through which the vagina cleans itself and very effectively.

The amount of discharge varies from girl to girl.  Some girls produce a lot of vaginal discharge whilst others produce very little. Throughout the month, the discharge may vary a little in colour, what it feels like, how sticky it is and how much of it there is. The vaginal discharge tends to be a bit heavier around the time a girl ovulates, which is when an egg is released from the ovary and moves into the fallopian tubes.

Normal vaginal discharge should never cause itching or burning and should not be smelly. You should not worry if your discharge is normal.

 If your vaginal discharge is smelly, causes itching and is of a different colour than the usual e.g. it is yellow or green, this may be indication of a vaginal infection and you need to see a doctor.

It is perfectly normal to have small hips and a flat chest at the age of 15.
Don’t compare the size of your hips and breasts to those of your friends because we all grow at different rates and girls at the same age can have different hips and breast sizes because of differences in families, hormones and weight. Be yourself and love the way you are because each one of us is unique.

You should not be deceived by your friends that you need sex to get “vitamin S” to help you grow big hips and to develop breasts. The truth is at same age (which may vary from person to person) in the life of a girl, the pituitary gland which is located at the base of the brain sends a message to the ovaries to begin producing the hormone estrogen. Estrogen travels throughout the body of a girl and is responsible for stimulating the changes that take place during puberty like the development of breasts and broadening of hips.

You should just relax because you really don’t have to do anything to develop breasts and big hips. These are some of the body changes which occur naturally in girls when they reach puberty. Just wait for your time to come.

At your age of 15 you need to concentrate on your studies, don’t even think of having sexual relationship simply because your friends are advising you to do so. Sexual intercourse may lead you to lack of concentration in class, early unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted Diseases (STDs) and school drop-out.

Yes it is possible for a couple who are both HIV positive to produce a child who is HIV negative using Preventing Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) of HIV.

The child is not infected at the moment of conception as sperm and ova do not carry the HIV virus and they are what create the foetus. The baby is usually infected during pregnancy as the mother exchanges blood with her child through the placenta. It is during the delivery that the risk of infection of the child is highest due to exposure to maternal blood and vaginal secretions. The baby can also be infected by the mother’s milk, which contains HIV during breastfeeding.

Mother-to-child transmission of HIV can greatly be prevented through regular testing of pregnant mothers. Free ARVs are given at the hospital to the HIV positive mothers during pregnancy, labor and delivery, after delivery and to the newborn babies for the first few weeks of their life. There are should also be no breastfeeding of the baby.

No. it is not true that ARVs cure HIV/AIDS. Antiretroviral medicines (ARVs) are not a cure for HIV/AIDS and cannot prevent HIV infection but can significantly improve the quality of life of people living with the HIV virus. ARVs taken correctly reduce the ability of the HIV virus to replicate or multiply. This in turn increases the ability of the body to fight diseases.

ARVs therefore change HIV from a terminal (fatal) disease to a chronic disease like diabetes, high blood pressure and asthma. A chronic disease is one which can not  be “cured” but can be controlled.

HIV uses CD4 cells (infection-fighting white blood cells) as an HIV factory to replicate or multiply. ARVs get into the CD4 cells at different places and reduce the ability of the HIV virus to replicate so less HIV virus can be made. Because of the nature of the replication cycle of the HIV virus, ARVs usually work in a combination, each acting at a different stage and in a different way to prevent HIV replicating with the CD4 cell.

The amount of HIV in a person’s blood is called viral load. People with a high viral load are more likely to progress rapidly to AIDS than people with a low viral load.

A person on ARVs should not stop even if he or she feels better. It is extremely important for the person on ARVs to adhere to a course of ARV treatment as recommended by the health care adviser. Adherence means to take the correct combination of the ARVs, the correct dose, the correct frequency and at the correct time. A person on ARVs needs a support network (friends, family, HIV+ peers) to encourage and remind him or her to adhere to the course of ARV treatment.

If a person on ARVs misses a dose, it becomes easier for the virus to change its form (mutate) inside the body. Once this happens, the original ARV course will not be effective against the new virus that has mutated or changed form.

Frequent poor adherence, may lead to greater risk of transmission, susceptibility to other infections, increased health costs, drug resistance, limited future ARV treatment options and faster progression to AIDS.

Your challenge is a diverse one in the sense that you not only have to live with yourself but also with the different world in your life like your friends, classmates, the school community and family. This entire world of yours has to be in good balance for you to live comfortably in school. In them all however, you should not look at yourself as someone “gone” with no hope at all because the truth is that you still have a future to achieve your dreams in life. A number of HIV positive people are still living successful lives.

With yourself, you may need to try and accept your status and better look after yourself by taking your medication consistently (that is if you started on ARVs), keeping out of stressful situations so as not to burden your mind, feed in a healthy way, go for routine counseling for support and guarding your life from re-infection or infecting others.

With friends and classmates, hard as it might seem, you may need to let your friends know about your status so that all can better protect themselves from getting infected, to earn yourself social support which you will so much need and to be a role model for other students that might have the same challenge as you but with less courage.

While in school, you might have to empower yourself with skills to build your confidence because in as much as stigma against HIV positive students is going down, not everyone will have a positive attitude towards you. If you don’t have confidence, you may feel less of yourself and even perform poorly in class.

Besides friends, you have to let medical personnel know about your condition, so that you can easily be helped in case you have need for medical assistance.

At home, one of the main things you need is social support- to remind you about your medication, provide for your good feeding, offer you a stepping stone of confidence, just as it needs to be for any other family member.

All in all, you are going to need to love and appreciate yourself, try to build a firm social network and to live positively. You are still very youthful and still have a lot to offer to your world.