FEAR eats the soul

the fear beforehand that creates the terror of being stigmatised.
For example, I did an article with my local press. I was fine

about the photographs being taken and having my name in the paper. But oh my god, when it came out they actually printed my address. I was horrified. I imagined someone coming up to me in my local supermarket, shouting ‘she’s got Aids’, and coming round to my house. Then I realised that I couldn’t live in fear like this. If someone was ignorant enough to do something like this, then it was they who had the problem. I had to face the fear and work through it. Needless to say, no one ever did approach me after that article.
It took me several years, but I really believe that the more isolationist you are about this thing, the more you promote ignorance.”

Promise Mthembu is a young South African woman living here in the UK with a child. She thinks the initial Aids message is to blame:
“Stigma is still an issue everywhere and I think this has to be credited to the early media response to HIV which associated it with ‘bad people’. The initial marketing and messages around Aids were of horror. These have stuck with us.
It was worse in South Africa where I come from. The image was of a horrible disease for horrible people. It’s getting treatments to people and people getting

well and living with HIV that will really reduce stigma, particularly in Africa. It will normalise HIV.
I don’t think it’s because HIV is transmitted mainly through sex either that makes people treat it with shame. There are other infections you get from sex. For example, in my country I remember at one time it was cool for guys to visit STI clinics a few times a week cos it proved they were sexually active!
Here I think the problems are more personal ones. And also if you’re an asylum seeker with HIV you get an extra worry because you feel stigmatised on both counts.
My child has HIV and cerebral palsy. I’ve decided not to tell the education authorities that she has HIV because if I do they will treat her differently and she already has a lot to bear with another condition. I

don’t tell my childminders either. If it doesn’t seem safe or beneficial then I do keep it secret; I suppose this is where stigma does affect me.