World AIDS Day

Today is a day to remember what AIDS means to the world. It is a day to make people aware that this disease affects millions of people directly, and all of us indirectly. For many people in the US, AIDS is a problem for people in other parts of the world. Their knowledge of AIDS is the images of emaciated bodies wasting away in hospitals in the 1980's, or emaciated children living in Africa. Many people don't think about AIDS at all, it is not our problem. Two years ago I was one of those people, but God opened my eyes, and my heart, and changed my life and my family forever.

My husband brought home fliers from the University yesterday for movies they are showing on campus in honor of World AIDS Day. I found them almost offensive. One was about the secret shame of living with AIDS. It made me wonder when we are going to get past being ashamed of living with HIV. If we cannot get past the stigma in the US, how can we criticize people living with HIV in countries where health care is not available, and the stigma involved means losing your job or your property?

Having lived with HIV in a very real way this year I can tell you that there is nothing to be ashamed of. It is a virus, it is treatable, it is preventable. It lives in many people that did nothing shameful to get it.

This year we can celebrate some victories. One man received a bone marrow transplant from a person that is resistant to HIV. His virus has not come back since that surgery. The ban on HIV+ immigrants coming to the US has been lifted by President Obama. Many families are adopting orphans that are HIV+. Many insurance companies are reviewing policies that had not allowed HIV+ patients certain treatments due to their perceived shorter life spans. For all of these victories we can rejoice.

But there is still much to do. There are still people in America that think "those diseased people" should not be allowed to enter our country. They believe that they will negatively impact our health care system. They believe that people can "catch" HIV from other people. They believe that HIV is something to be ashamed of. Shame on them.

They really need to know that HIV can be treated. The cost of treating HIV is no more than the cost of managing diabetes, depression, high blood pressure, and far less than treating cancer, or congenital heart defects, or many other diseases that our health care system has to deal with. You can not "CATCH" HIV. You can get HIV from blood to blood transmission or through breast milk. HIV is not a strong virus, once it gets outside the body it dies quickly. There are many people living with HIV that have no detectable virus in their blood because of the medications that they take.

AIDS is a devastating disease. Today much of the devastation is not what the virus does to the body, but what other people do to those that have the virus. Ignorance is the most shameful part of this epidemic. This World AIDS Day do something to make a difference. Tell someone that doesn't know, that HIV does not have to be the scary disease we saw in the 1980's. Get educated about HIV, and take action to defeat this attitude that causes people to live in shame.