This week marks a 30-year anniversary of the AIDS epidemic's documentation by clinicians. I was lucky, I came out with a caring friend who was HIV positive and who constantly warned me of the dangers during my young and dumb days. He would press the points on the dangers, and of the way that "everything changes" when people know. He went through so much, and I got to witness that and how his own family turned their backs on him for it.
Now our treatments are far better than they were in the late 80s and early 90s when I was fresh out of High school. But some things, haven't changed so much.
Through the years there has been progress in our battle with this disease, and some very impressive recent breakthroughs. Unfortunately, even now 30 years later, in many rural communities the strength of the stigma of infection has not improved as much as many of us would like, especially in your more rural areas like here in Kentucky...
..."Once you leave the borders of Lexington, it's really bad," said Mark Royse, executive director of AVOL, which provides AIDS education and support for clients in 72 Kentucky counties. "We have clients in rural areas of Kentucky who hide their medication so if something happens to them, their family members won't find out" that they are HIV-positive, Royse said.
"The stigma is so bad in some communities, it can put you at risk physically" if your HIV status is known, he said.
The stigma stems from the public perception of AIDS, said Dr. Robert Crosby, an AIDS researcher and chairman of the department of health behavior in the University of Kentucky's College of Public Health.
"AIDS was marginalized early on as a 'gay' disease," he said. Then it was perceived as a disease of drug users and heterosexuals with multiple sex partners. Or, Crosby said, the public perception was that AIDS infected "folks who had it coming to them because they had sex outside of marriage or had sex with too many people."
That false perception continues to discourage people from being tested, he said.
"They are afraid to get tested because they are afraid of the social stigma that follows," Crosby said. "We treat people with this disease different from the way we treat people who have cancer."
He said that problem that isn't going to go away.
According to the non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation, Kentucky ranks 19th among states for HIV infection. Health officials say that at least one new HIV infection is discovered each day in Kentucky. Many more go undiagnosed; nationally, roughly 20 percent of those with HIV aren't aware that they have the disease....(MORE IN LINK)
When will our society get past this? As a nurse in rural Kentucky of over 10 years, I can say by my own experience the majority of cases I have cared for personally were not gay (many were IV drug abusers). But how someone got infected should not be relevant except in formulating educational and prevention strategies, not stigmatizing victims of the disease.
Clearly we exacerbate the problem by allowing these misperceptions to persist. But those misperceptions and stigmas come in part from homophobia. the cries of those who fear comprehensive and effective sex education and in part from a general medical ignorance of the condition. A desire by some to continue their stances of bigotry or to shield their offspring from the dangerous reality of the consequences of their possible activities is keeping this cycle of infection and stigma alive.
So this anniversary, do something to dispel that myth if you get a chance. Talk about the anniversary, the fact that globally this is not a disease that chooses people based on what some believe is deviations from morality and instead one that infects indiscriminately based on unsafe behaviors or accidental infection.
...He said that problem that isn't going to go away....
It has to go away. I fear we can't win the war against this disease unless it does. The ignorance of the disease must change, the "blame the victim" mentality must change, and the homophobia core of the stigma must change. I has to if we really want to win this in my opinion.
What is yours?