All year round, we celebrate World Day of this, International Day of that...there are so many but there is one particular date that I never forget, which is World AIDS Day on December 1st. No, I do not know of anyone personally that has been infected by HIV and AIDS. I don't have any personal stories to share. The closest I've been to people living with HIV was the time I helped host three Speakers (who were doing a Speakers Tour around England) at the University of Sheffield. You don't have to have experienced something to really care about it. Of course, most people become very compassionate about certain things based on their experiences. My experience with HIV and AIDS is not that deep. It goes back to February 2013 when I started my first job, with the Communications Unit of Management Sciences for Health, Nigeria. I remember it was sometime during my second week that my boss started giving me some background information on a story I had to write, and I guess she thought I looked very confused or blank that's why she paused and asked "How much do you know about HIV?" and I said nothing. I knew that MSH worked around HIV and AIDS (improving clinical services and training medical workers, and providing assistance for orphans and vulnerable children who had lots parents to AIDS). I thought that going through the MSH website, reading their brochures/success stories (from Nigeria and around the world) was enough, but no - I needed to understand things like CD4 cells and anti-retroviral treatments, mainly because when I had to interview my colleagues in order to write a news report or story based on their work, they would use scientific terms (I didn't always have to write those terms in my story, but I had to understand them in order to translate them into something that everyone else would understand).
I guess the highlights of my year at MSH were 1) when we met the Head of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Mark Dybul - trust me, I was star struck when I saw him in the distance!) and 2) when we attended a Special Summit of the African Union on AIDS, TB and Malaria (in which I got to stalk several African Heads of States with my camera!) Sitting through these two events really helped me see the tremendous efforts done by Governments and different non-government organizations in the fight against this pandemic HIV/AIDS.
When I was in England for my post graduate studies, I found a student society called "Student Stop AIDS" at the University of Sheffield, and I became a very active member. Of course it was not compulsory to join a student organization; but I wanted to maximize my post graduate year (so I joined other societies too). That was back in 2013/14 - it wasn't a big society at all; only 4 of us were very active and met all the time. The other three members were medical science students, so the language they used during our discussions was a bit difficult for me to follow at first, so I was more helpful with planning events and promoting them. Our very first project was a video - one day we decided to go around the University and ask passers-by a few questions just to know how much they know about HIV/AIDS. *A few days after this, we met in the library to put the video together, but we spent SO MUCH TIME just "hanging out" talking/laughing about every other thing rather than the project at stake....so this video was never achieved😕
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| me taking the video; STOP AIDS president Harvy asking the questions |
Anyways, summary of the interviews was that most of the students were clueless! You can't blame them, I mean I too don't know much about many things that really don't concern me and besides, there is a general conception that HIV/AIDS and malaria are a thing of "the African continent". Which is why I prepared a FACT SHEET which we shared with the interviewees and also other people in general. Take a look:
The next major event we had was a Speakers Tour - there was a group of three people (HIV+) who were travelling around England, visiting universities which had a STOP AIDS student society. I remember in that group was a woman from Uganda, a man from China and another man from Scottland. They had different stories to share. The woman for example used to run a prostitution business (selling women out), then along the way she got the virus. This experience made a 360 degree change in her life; now she has a home taking care of women living with HIV/AIDS. The Chinese man on the other hand was positive before he got married, but love did not stop him and his wife from getting married, even though it risked his wife and future child from getting infected. Lucky for them, his wife and his new born baby did not get the virus. The Scottish man's story was the kind of story we very often hear in the HIV world - which is that of the virus being passed from one man to another man. His boyfriend of nine years cheated on him, and then the virus got passed to him and for many years he faced a life of ridicule and shame. Yes, when HIV/AIDS was new, it was generally believed that it only belonged to the "gay community" but now we know it's not just limited to them.
Three years ago, to commemorate World AIDS Day, we organized a screening of a documentary called HOW TO STOP A PLAGUE. It shows the beginning of HIV/AIDS activism. trailer below:
Whereas the documentary mostly shows the "gay community's" experience, this second movie "Inside Story" directed by Rolie Nikiwe shows how it affects regular heterosexual people. In this case, one boy who didn't know he had contracted the virus through one interaction, and how that affected his future/dreams.
Dallas Buyers Club is another one of my favorite movies on HIV/AIDS (yes, I've seen so many movies with the HIV/AIDS theme) and that's because it looks at the angle of the drugs (unavailability and high costs of treatment), thus the extent some people have to go to save their lives. Even though this movie was set in the 1980s, the problems surrounding access to medicine still remains.
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| one of our campaigns three years ago, regarding the TRIPS Agreement |
I decided to share these movies with you because I know it does require effort to pick up a book or dedicate a few minutes on google to learn more about HIV/AIDS. Especially when you're someone who thinks - hey, I don't engage in promiscuous activities, I don't share needles, or the risk of HIV/AIDS in the country I live in is so tiny...but just knowing some of these things does not take anything away from us. In fact, being educated about HIV/AIDS, being aware of the truths around it CAN go a long way in stopping the virus from spreading, AND most importantly, in helping those who have to virus to recover properly. Why? The discrimination faced by people who have this virus is indescribable. No one criticizes someone who has TB, or malaria or even ebola. They'd just say sorry. But knowing someone has HIV/AIDS? Let's be honest, first thing you'll think of is that person's private/intimate life. Even children born with the virus are already discriminated, as if that child has sinned, or is just being punished for the sins of their parents.
Ending this with another movie - well, this is a short one and it also happens to be the first full movie that I've ever watched in the Filipino language. This was an episode shown on Maalaala Mo Kaya this December 3rd. Watch it here . Sorry to my non-Filipino readers (this is not in English). But I sobbed like a baby watching the first part. So knowing this is based on a true story, and knowing there are thousands of people around the world who have had similar experiences helps one to stop discriminating those infected by HIV and AIDS. It's no one's choice or decision to go through this. The main character in this film was raped, in the process of working overseas in order to earn money to support her family back home. We have no idea what these people really go through, and the least we can do is treat them in such a way that they will never have to remember what they went through. Remove the stigma. Learn the facts, learn the stories, be aware, before we start pasting uneducated labels at others.