For your Confidentiality, do not give your name when you call, we will assign a number for you. When you show up, please just tell the front desk that you are here for number 9 Service.

For more information, Please contact 770-936-0969 ext. 25 or email yotin@cpacs.org

* OraQuick® ADVANCE Rapid HIV-1/2 Antibody Test, the first and only U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) approved and CLIA (Clinical Laboratory Improvements Amendments Act of 1988) waived rapid point-of-care test that provides accurate results for both HIV-1 and HIV-2 in 20 minutes, using oral fluid, finger-stick or venipuncture whole blood or plasma specimens.

For more information on OraQuick please call toll free number 1-800-869-3538 or visit www.orasure.com

The Center for Pan Asian Community Services (CPACS)
3760 Park Ave.
Doraville, GA 30340
www.cpacs.org
(Off of Buford Hwy across the street from Doraville Marta Station and Doraville Court House.)

“People can have HIV for many years without feeling or looking sick. They may not even know they are infected. But they can still pass the virus on to others.” Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is the virus responsible for causing AIDS. AIDS is an acronym for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, the end stage of the whole disease process. People who have this virus in their bodies have what is called HIV infection. HIV is a disease with many stages. People with HIV may have no symptoms, a few symptoms or many serious symptoms. Over time, HIV damages the body's immune system, which protects the body from disease. When the immune system gets very weak, other diseases and infections can enter the body. This stage of HIV is called AIDS. Although there is no cure, there are medications now that help people to live healthy.

The only way to know if you are infected is to be tested for the HIV infection. Symptoms may show up several months to several years after infected with HIV. In some case, the virus can be present with no symptoms for many years. Warning signs may include unexplained weight loss or tiredness, flu-like feelings that do not go away, diarrhea, and white spots in mouth, in women, yeast infections that don't go away. However, no one should assume they are infected if they have these symptoms. Again, the only way to know if you are infected is to be tested for the HIV infection. HIV lives in semen, vaginal fluid, blood, and breast milk of a person with HIV. It can be passed from one person to another through these infected fluids. It can be passed during vaginal, oral or anal sex. It can be passed while sharing needles and equipment to inject drugs. It can be passed by needles used for tattoos and piercing or to inject vitamins or steroids. Even health workers caring for people with HIV can get HIV from needle stick injuries. HIV can also be passed from a mother to her baby during pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding.

HIV is not passed by donating blood, hugging, dry kissing, tears, saliva, sweat or urine, and mosquitoes or other insects. In additional, you cannot get the virus by sharing food, telephones, toilet seats, and towels or eating utensils. Everybody can reduce HIV by abstaining from sexual intercourse or being in a long-term mutually monogamous relationship with a partner who has been tested and you know is uninfected. Each person should talk to his or her partner about past sexual history and should learn more about his or her behavior to insure that he or she has not shared needles to inject drugs or had unprotected sex with anyone who has. Using latex condoms consistently and correctly and knowing how to protect yourself are powerful weapons against HIV. AIDS has killed more than 20 million people since the first cases were diagnosed in 1981, including 2.9 million in 2003 alone. In the U.S., nearly 406,000 people were living with AIDS at the end of 2003. For Asians, one of the fastest-growing ethnic/racial populations in the U.S., HIV/AIDS is on the rise. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of APIs living with AIDS has climbed by more than 10 percent in each of the last 5 years. We hope a message down here would help to decrease those numbers. We hope to see a decreasing number in HIV infection cases and deaths from AIDS in all races. Early detection of infection allows for more options for treatment and preventative health care.

If you are unsure of your HIV status, please get tested today!