Living with HIV

WE MUST thank American actor Charlie Sheen for bringing the conversation on HIV and Aids on to the mainstream table about two weeks forward.

We usually remember to talk about HIV and Aids around December 1, World Aids Day. It is on the day and a few before and after the calendar-marked day that the virus that has occupied our collective attention gets its more than fair share of attention.

Sheen’s very public hedonistic inclinations have punctuated a lot of the commentary around his announcement that he is living with HIV.

While this obviously increased Sheen’s chances, we must be careful not to return to an era more than 20 years ago when HIV and Aids was seen as a punishment for those who live what some might regard as licentious lives.

Today we know that HIV and Aids can and does affect and infect anyone regardless of class, lifestyle and sexual orientation and indeed moral rectitude.

That Sheen has revealed that he was blackmailed and had paid millions to keep his HIV status a secret reveals just how little has been achieved in destigmatising being HIV.

If Sheen, who lives in a sophisticated and so-called First World country, can cower in shame for four years as he did, we must spare a thought for those who live in unsophisticated societies and in ignorance, for whom a revelation of HIV status can mean immediate ostracisation and even death, as happened to KwaMashu woman Gugu Dlamini who was stoned to death after revealing her HIV status in December 1998.

It is clear that the fight against HIV and the attached stigma is far from over.

If we had been complacent and had thought that living with the virus was not thought of as it was when Dlamini was brutally murdered, Charlie Sheen has violently shaken us out of our slumber.

HIV and Aids thrive in the darkness of ignorance and bigotry. Speaking out against both and supporting those who live with the virus, respecting their decision whether they keep the information to themselves or share it with others, is one weapon against the disease which either infects or affects us all.