My name is Dr. Guillermo Santos from Betances Health Center in New York City, and today I will be talking with you about an important issue affecting patients with HIV and AIDS, and that is anemia.
Anemia is a condition where the body manufactures an abnormally low level of red blood cells.
It afflicts 95 percent of patients with HIV and it's a common complication of HIV and AIDS in the treatments that they take for their condition. Your doctor can run a simple laboratory test in the clinic in the hospital, and it's called cell blood count, where you can measure hemoglobin and hematocrit. Hemoglobin is a molecule that carries the oxygen to all tissues of your body. Your body needs oxygen, such as a car needs gasoline. It's the fuel of all the living cells in your body.