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Q: HIV transmission while cooking ?
asked by: DoctorQuestion on March 26th, 2009
I had an encounter last week that has scared me a lot. I visited one of my relatives who is HIV . She was cooking food for us. While preparing the food she cut the index finger of her right hand with a knife and started bleeding. She sucked the blood with her mouth and continued preparing the food.

She was toasting a bread sandwhich in a frying pan and she used her right hand many times to flip the Sandwhich. She then put it on a plate and offered me. I did not think much of it and ate the Sandwhiches (about 4 in all).

Earlier that day I had peeled off some of the skin from my lips with my teeth(I think it also bled a little) and they were hurting.
I am worried because there is a good probability that fresh blood could have come in contact with the Sanwhich and I ate it almost immediately afterwards. And then again, the skin on my lips was hurting.

Please help me with this scenario and whether I should test for this and pardon me if I seem to be rude.


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Dr. Goce Aleksovski , MD
replied on March 26th, 2009
HIV and AIDS Answer A6146



The exact time from the cut till you ate the sandwiches, as well as the time they were cooked in the frying pen might have been helpful. The HIV is a virus and it cannot survive for longer period out of human body. If the food was exposed to heat for longer period then the number of viral particles have decreased significantly.
You might want to have yourself tested for HIV 3 weeks and again 3 months after exposure just to be on the safe side.




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