Table of Contents
HIV in Children
What are the signs of HIV in a child?
HIV symptoms in children and teens
- lack of energy.
- delayed growth and development.
- persistent fever, sweating.
- frequent diarrhea.
- enlarged lymph nodes.
- repeated or prolonged infections that don’t respond well to treatment.
- weight loss.
- failure to thrive.
What happens if a child has HIV?
As with adults, when an HIV infection advances, kids start to develop infections that rarely affect healthy people but can be deadly for someone whose immune system isn’t working well. These “opportunistic infections” include: Pneumocystis pneumonia, a fungal infection of the lungs.
How long can a child live with HIV?
The current average life expectancy is about 10 years from the time of diagnosis, but new treatments mean things are improving all the time. With good care, HIV-infected children today have a good chance of living as long as anyone else who has the disease, and that can be decades.
How does a child get HIV?
How do children become infected with HIV? More than 90 percent of HIV infections in children result from mother-to-child-transmission, where the virus is passed from a mother living with HIV to her baby during pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding.
