What Can Teens Everywhere Do to Prevent Getting HIV?

American health officials are sometimes forced by law to advocate for abstinence rather than to encourage HIV-positive  teens to use drugs like Truvada in combination with condoms when they have sex. Insurance companies are reticent to pay for the drug, which can cost as much as $1,540 for a month's supply when purchased retail. (The Gilead Advancing Access Program can help people who don't have insurance or whose insurance won't pay for the medication; if approved for the program, the company may help with up to $3,600 of drug cost per year. This would be enough for an on-demand schedule for users who do not have sex more often than about once every 10 days.) However, not everyone can take Truvada because of its side effects.

Your best bets for avoiding HIV if you can't take the prophylactic drug are:

• Avoid especially risky sex. Any kind of rough sex that induces bleeding, sex with hard sex toys, sex despite symptoms of herpes or other viral infections (which make it easier for HIV to overpower the immune system), sex with strangers, sex with multiple partners, sex with paid sex workers, and sex in a setting where there is IV drug use are far more likely to result in HIV transmission.
• Avoid exchange of fluids. "On me not in me" is the usual recommendation of HIV experts. Masturbation is less risky than intercourse. Oral intercourse is less risk than vaginal intercourse. Vaginal intercourse is less risky than anal intercourse. However, any kind of intercourse can transmit the virus.
• Don't indulge in anonymous sex. Call the morning after, and the next week, too. HIV transmission often causes flu-like symptoms in its very earliest stages, before the virus is detectable with blood tests. After these initial symptoms pass, there aren't usually any more obvious symptoms for months or years, sometimes up to five years. If your partner gets these symptoms, and you don't know your own HIV status, it's a good idea to get tested.
• If you choose to have sex with an HIV-positive person, he or she should be on drugs to suppress the virus. Even unprotected sex is a lot less risky when the infected partner is on antiviral medications.
• Guys who get circumcisions as teenagers should avoid sexual intercourse until the cut is fully healed. Broken skin around the head of the penis is extremely susceptible to viral infections. 
• Avoid club drugs, such as cocaine/crack, crystal methamphetamine, amphetamines, ketamine, methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA/ecstasy), and gamma hydroxybutyric acid (GHB). People taking those drugs tend to engage in sexual behaviors they can only tolerate when they are using the recreational drug. Gay males may use them so they can tolerate receiving anal intercourse. There are more incidents of sex without a condom and sex that breaks a condom when these drugs are part of sex.

READ Sixty-Second HIV Testing Now Available In The USA

Sex can be a beautiful experience, and the more romantic, considerate, and clean sexual relationships are, the safer they are for the teens who experience them. Even if you can't wait to have sex, at least wait long enough to do sex well, as a loving act that won't endanger the health of the person with whom you are intimate.