Hi there,

You probably don’t need to be worried about HIV from what you have described here.

First of all, it’s unlikely you could get pricked with a needle without noticing pain or bleeding when it happened.

If that did happen, it’s unlikely that a needle poke like that would give you HIV. HIV dies in seconds when it is exposed to air. It can live a little bit longer in a hollow needle, but in reality we are not seeing people get HIV from being pricked by needles unknowingly. In practice, when people have contracted HIV from a needle, it is most often a needle that came out of an HIV positive person and went directly into another person. This happens when people share needles for using injection drugs, or when there are accidents in healthcare. 

It can be frightening to think that someone wants to intentionally give you an infection, but it’s not at all likely that you will get HIV this way.

Please leave a comment below to let us know if that answers your question. For other people reading, leave a comment to let us know if you found this helpful.

Health Nurse