STIGMA AND DISCRMINATION:


AIDS: Myths and Misconceptions

This is a short Article written by Obert Madondo on the myths and misconceptions that have existed around HIV/AIDS both in Canada and in Africa...

Most of the world, whether from North America, Africa or elsewhere, first heard about AIDS in 1984/85, a few years after the disease had been confirmed. They heard about the disease from hospitals, school, through the media, and, to a limited extend, friends and other social contacts. The information was always laden with fear: AIDS equaled death.

The dominant perception in Africa was that AIDS had been scientifically created by the West to wipe out African populations. The Soviet newspaper Literary Gazette cemented this perception when it claimed in 1985 that AIDS was the product of U.S. germ warfare experiments. Other reports claimed that the US government had sponsored a Special Virus Cancer Program to create a lethal biological warfare entity that destroyed the human immune system.

In rural Zimbabwe, secondary school students referred to AIDS as America's Idea of Discouraging Sex.

In the West, especially North America, AIDS was believed to have originated from Africa and Haiti. The disease then killed mostly gay men, so it became 'gay disease' and was even erroneously referred to as Gay Related Immune Disorder (GRID).

People from different parts of the world considered AIDS to be a foreign disease brought into their midst by tourists and other visitors. Canadian airline steward Gaetun Dugas was blamed for acquiring the disease from from 'somewhere' before infecting several hundred victims, especially in North America. The dominant belief was that the disease was 'out there'. In the most visible example of official denial, US President Ronald Reagan joked about AIDS in 1982 and never mentioned the word in public for the next three years.

In the 80s, AIDS killed mostly men in Africa and therefore was considered a 'men's disease. It killed older people, so it was an older people's disease. In North America, AIDS also took an 'elite/Hollywood identity', especially after film star Rock Husdon died in 1985.

As the disease multiplied in the late 80s, so did the misconceptions. People believed one could become infected with HIV through day-to-day contact with affected people in social settings, schools or in the workplace. They believed one could get infected by shaking an HIV-positive person's hand, by hugging, by kissing them, by using the same toilet, by drinking from the same glass, by being exposed to coughing or sneezing by an infected person.

This is all wrong!

These continued misconceptions in the 90s were fueled by the fear with which AIDS was initially associated. The fear and misconceptions often led to stigmatized conception of people associated with HIV/AIDS in the public mind: gays, intravenous drug users, sex workers and people from countries with high prevalence rates. For some in the West, AIDS was 'a disease of the poor in Africa'. AIDS was 'not in my family or hometown'.

In Africa and other developing countries, HIV/AIDS was often regarded a disease of the promiscuous. People infected with the disease were considered a source of shame and isolated, even abandoned.

But the high-profile disclosures and deaths of celebrities in the 1990s provided a milestone in a new understanding of HIV/AIDS. Basketball star Magic Johnson disclosed his HIV-positive status in 1991. British Rock singer, Freddie Mercury, tennis legend, Arthur Ash, and gangsta rapper Easy E and others died of the disease in the 1990s.

These high-profile deaths and disclosures attracted more and better media attention. AIDS service organizations have sprouted everywhere and many governments around the world are giving more attending to the disease. In fact, the HIV/AIDS fight is now a global one. Few die in isolation. We have now disentangled ourselves from the earlier myriad of misconceptions and accepted that HIV/AIDS is not only 'over there': it may not yet be on my doorstep but has already reached the doorstep of my fellow neighbor somewhere in the global community.

We now know that HIV can infect people of any color or gender or age. We now know that HIV/AIDS affects mostly the reproductive and productive populations of most developing countries, living collapsed economies and millions of orphans. HIV/AIDS is not a death sentence. For now, the disease has no cure, but, when medication is provided, people living with HIV/AIDS can live many, happy normal years.

This new knowledge is our power. When we provide resources to community service organizations in places like Africa, we empower them to care for the affected and infected, for orphans, and to engage in the continually required education. When we provide bikes to heath workers in Africa, we enable them to cover more people and remote areas that would otherwise be unreachable. When we create linkages with the affected and infected, through organizations like CAP AIDS, when we donate our resources, time and skills, we are fulfilling a global responsibility the HIV/AIDS pandemic has created, one which we can not walk away from.


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