When first infected with HIV, a person may not experience any symptoms for several weeks because the immune system has not begun to fight the virus. However, once HIV enters the body through any of the routes as we now know them, the White Blood Cells (WBC) called CD4 or T4 cells take the lead in fighting off such infection. Damage to these cells can eventually affect the person’s capacity to fight off the infection.

• Lack of energy
• Weight loss
• Frequent fevers and sweats
• A thick whitish coating of the tongue or mouth (oral thrush) sometimes accompanied by a sore throat. 
• Severe or recurring vaginal yeast infections
• Chronic pelvic inflammatory disease or severe and frequent infections like herpes
• Periods of extreme and unexplained fatigue that may be combined with headache, light-headedness, and/or dizziness
• Rapid loss of more than pounds of weight that is not due to increased physiological dieting
• Proneness to bruising than normal
• Long lasting bouts of diarrhoea
• Swollen or hardening of glands located in the armpit, throat or groin.
• Periods of continued, deep, dry coughing
• Increased shortness of breath
• Appearance of discoloured or purplish growths or the skin or inside mouth
• Unexplained bleeding from growths or the skin, from mucous membranes, or other parts of the body
• Recurring or unusual skin rashes
• Severe numbness or pain in the hands or feet, the loss of muscle control and loss of muscular strength
• An altered state of consciousness, personality change, or mental deterioration
• Children may grow slowly or fall sick frequently. HIV positive person are also vulnerable to some cancers.

During your first appointment your health care provider or doctor will ask you questions, examine you, take a blood sample, and do some other tests.

Tell your health care provider about any health problems you are having so that you can get the right treatment, advice and counselling. You also should ask any questions you have about HIV or AIDS, such as:

• What to do if your medicine makes you sick
• Where to get help for quitting smoking or using drugs
• How to create a healthier diet
• How to minimize the chance of you spreading HIV to your partner

Your blood sample is used for many tests, including the CD4 cell count and viral load. Your CD4 cell count tells you how many CD4 cells you have in your blood. If you are getting treatment, your CD4 cell counts indicate how well it is working. If your CD4 cell count rises, your body is better able to fight infection. Viral load testing measures the amount of HIV in your blood. Your viral load helps predict what will happen next with your HIV infection if you don’t get treatment.

Keep your follow-up appointments with your doctor. At these appointments you and your health care provider will talk about your test results, and he or she may prescribe medicine for you.

This is a life time treatment regimen and it means once started you have to adhere to guidelines such as taking drugs as advised and attend follow up care as scheduled.

Symptoms

It is highly common for many people not to develop any symptoms when they first become infected with HIV. Some people however, get flu-like illnesses within three to six weeks upon exposure to the virus. This is normally the acute HIV syndrome and maybe characterized by fever, headache, tiredness, nausea, diarrhoea and swelling of the lymph nodes (around the neck, armpits and groin). During this period the viral load in the body is very high and infection does spread rapidly, particularly to the lymphoid tissues. At this stage a person in this acute phase is up to a hundred times more likely to transmit the virus to other persons because the immune system has yet to reduce the number of viruses in the body.

The viral quantity then drops as the body’s immune system launches its defence hence more persistent or severe symptoms may not surface for several years, even up to a decade. This “asymptomatic” phase varies from person to person. Some people may begin to show symptoms as soon as a few months, while others may be symptom-free for more than 10 years. During this “asymptomatic” period the virus maybe actively multiplying, infecting and killing cell structures of the immune system.