Today, more tools than ever are available to prevent HIV. You can use strategies such as abstinence (not having sex), limiting your number of sexual partners, never sharing needles, and using external ("male") or internal ("female") condoms the right way every time you have sex. You may also be able to take advantage of newer HIV prevention medicines such as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP).

If you are living with HIV, there are many actions you can take to prevent passing it to others. The most important is taking medicines to treat HIV (called antiretroviral therapy, or ART) the right way, every day. They can keep you healthy for many years. In addition, taking ART protections your partners. When a person living with HIV is on effective treatment, it will reduce the level of HIV to "undetectable" levels which protects their health and makes them incapable of transmitting HIV to their sexual partners, or what is often called "Undetectable = Untransmittable: U=U". As a prevention strategy, this is often referred to as Treatment as Prevention.