Steven Andrews* contracted HIV ten years ago, but never told his father, who died three weeks ago. “I suspected it would not be good for his health,” he explains, smiling faintly at the irony. “He was very old. He knew I was gay, and he was ok with that. But HIV is one of those things which test the limits of peoples’ liberalism. I kept it from him till the end.”
Mr Andrews is one of the 80,000 people living with HIV in the UK. He contracted the virus from an unfaithful ex-partner. Ten years on, the eloquent, energetic, successful businessmen says he is happy and feels well. But he admits that it has been hard to get used to the constant doses of anti retro-viral medication, which he says are “daily reminders of one’s mortality.”
The National AIDS Trust (NAT) says that people like Mr Andrews who are living with HIV in the UK have slipped off the agenda. “In the media, images of HIV abroad, in Africa for example, tend to be very sympathetic,” says Deborah Jack, Chief Executive of the National AIDS Trust. “But for people with HIV here in Britain, it’s a completely different story.”
Ms Jack points to headlines from British newspapers. “AIDS terror of jabbed bus driver,” reads one from The People. “Asylum seekers raising HIV risk” reads another from the Daily Mail. The message is clear. AIDS in Africa is a tragedy. HIV over here is a threat.
It’s a phenomenon that Mr Andrews knows all too well. “When you tell people, you kind of think everyone is going to be OK, because it’s the 21st century,” he says. “That’s actually not the case. I needed to talk about the practicalities of what I was going to do, but people were unable to discuss it.
“It’s like the way people react to a funeral. It causes people to contemplate their own mortality, so it’s loaded. HIV is the same. That’s especially true for gay men. Male homosexuals cut themselves off from other homosexuals who are HIV positive, because it’s too close.”
According to the NAT, levels of knowledge about the virus are actually declining. In 2000, 91% of the British public knew that it was possible to get HIV from unprotected heterosexual sex. But in 2007, that figure was just 79%.
The NAT says that our ignorance about HIV is down to continued misrepresentations of the condition since the successful public awareness campaigns of the 1980s. The recent ‘Hear no evil’ HIV awareness campaign, sponsored by the fashion company ALDO, which featured monochrome photographic portraits of stars like Christina Aguilera, Pink and Avril Lavigne, was criticized as ‘misleading’ by a leading HIV specialist because it targeted teenagers, instead of high risk groups such as Africans and homosexuals. Epidemiologist Dr Barry Evans accused government of being cowardice over telling the truth about HIV in the UK- namely, that those with the virus are primarily black and gay.
“We have shied away from telling the explicit truth about those at greatest risk from the virus for fear of how it will be manipulated by racists and homophobes,” says Dr Evans. In London, one in ten gay men has HIV. For black Africans, the figure is one in 27 – and rising fast. Evans adds: “I am not sure the government can handle or wants to handle a genuine debate about HIV in Britain.”
After ten years on medication, Mr Andrews is testament to the fact that life is not over for people with HIV. He has a full work life and a new partner, who is also HIV positive. “Viewed from one angle it’s been a tremendous gift,” he says. “Finding out you are HIV positive has the ability to completely change your point of view. It started out transforming my life in a very frightening way. But in the end, it connected me with my humanity.”
* Name has been changed
1 Comment
March 14, 2009 at 10:56 pm
But at least by telling people I am able to separate the friends from people I know.