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What is the risk of contracting HIV from a heterosexual encounter?

So many questions get asked about odds or chances of becoming infected with HIV after a particular sexual encounter. There simply is no meaningful way to answer such questions. I could give you a number for the odds of female-to-male HIV transmission per single sexual encounter. It would be a very low number. It would be based on world-wide statistics that would actually have very little bearing on whether you might have contracted HIV. I don't know (and you probably don't know) if your sexual partner has HIV or if she has virus present in her bloodstream. I don't know what strain of HIV may be circulating where you live. Some strains are known to cause higher concentrations of virus in vaginal fluid than other strains. I don't know if you're circumsized. If you are, the odds of infection per individual exposure go down. I can tell you this. If your sexual partner has HIV in her bloodstream, then you could be infected by vaginal fluid being rubbed into the inside of your foreskin, your glans, or your urethra. Wiping these areas down after sex is unlikely to reduce your chances of exposure. But it can't hurt. Using condoms, on the other hand, is a highly effective method of preventing exposure and infection.

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