We just commemorated World Aids day on 1 December.
I could not help but wonder if things have changed. I remember when I first heard about HIV/Aids, I was young and it was a killer disease that everyone talked about and those who were infected were judged. Stigma has always been an issue for those living and affected by the virus. Over the years, education about the virus has been prioritised, but I feel a lot still needs to be done.
Public clinics have the unfortunate system of colour-coding HIV patients and grouping them together for all to see why they are there. The system, to me, feels like a violation of privacy. The question is, if we still have such systems in place, identifying who is there for what, how are we going to encourage people to get tested when they feel their laundry will be hung out for all to see?
Personally, I think a lot is approached in the wrong way. HIV positive people still face daily struggles that we don’t understand and it’s the little negative things that people do to show that judgement is still there, although it’s a ‘silent treatment’.
People feel it’s important to share their lives on social media. The real question again is, would you share if you were HIV positive?
It’s not about how negative you are, it’s about how you handle the positive.
We are still a scared society hiding behind research and campaigns.
We stigmatise those infected and it’s our mindset that needs to change. An HIV-positive individual does not need to be judged and asked how they contracted the disease, especially when they’re young. There are so many diseases that are killer diseases, cancer being one of them, but we don’t stigmatise those patients. Why is it so difficult to treat HIV patients the same way?
Support goes a long way in helping with the acceptance process, and it’s time to be that support if someone you know is infected. But, in an honest way
Most of us know someone who is infected with the virus, and we need to fearlessly check what we actually think about them and, if necessary, question our attitudes.
