ENDING the whispering

individual cultures can’t cope with. It is what doesn’t get mentioned, what gets denied, what people would be most scared of if it happened to them.

“So tackling HIV stigma is about nothing less than changing a culture. But how on earth do you do this without imposing your own views from the outside? This is why we were so thrilled when the Red Cross/Crescent got involved. I thought, ‘Wow, the Red Cross is getting serious about Aids. I’m gonna get out the way!’”
Passing on the Truth
What’s so important about that? Well, the Red Cross/Red Crescent is the biggest, oldest (140 years) humanitarian relief organisation in the world. It commands an almost unique degree of non-partisan respect. Who can get into war zones ruled by

condom education in Thailand. Photos courtesy of Red Cross.

guerrillas or the Taliban? The Red Cross. Whose emblem is a universal signal for armies to cease fire? The Red Cross.
Bernard Gardiner is the Red Cross director of the ‘Truth About Aids - Pass it on’ campaign. “We are the biggest volunteer-led organisation in the world,” he says. “A tiny country like Lebanon trains 25,000 volunteers a year.
“The central idea behind the ‘Pass it on...’ campaign, explains Gardiner, “is to replace the whispering and finger-pointing directed at people with HIV with a ‘Positive Whispering Campaign’. We want The Truth to spread more rapidly than HIV.
“We suggest that each person tells three people one simple Truth about Aids. ‘You can’t get Aids from kissing,’ anything - communities will hopefully invent their own messages.
It isn’t just about persuading people to be nice to PWAs with glossy posters. It’s about supporting people with HIV to talk about their lives,” says Gardiner. “That’s why we got involved with GNP+. They have the experience of speaking as HIV positive people - but we have the organisations in areas they

could never set up from scratch.” There have been successes in the most unlikely places.