Categories: uncategorized
Date: 09 October 2007 22:53:47
Tonight I watched the second part of Stephen Fry's documentary called HIV and Me. I really 'enjoyed' this documentary, if enjoy is the right word to use about a documentary about a terrible illness. Maybe I should say that I found it very interesting. He looked at all sorts of different people who had contracted HIV, from children born with it to heterosexual and homosexual people who had contracted it through sexual contact. He also considered current risk taking, shame and stigma and whether the shock tactics of the 1980's and 1990's actually contributed to the stigma that people who have HIV today continue to suffer with.
When HIV and AIDS were discovered in the early 1980's the disease was viewed as life threatening and individuals were given extremely poor prognoses. These days people are now living with the HIV virus who contracted it over 20 years ago, largely due to the development of new and more effective drug therapies. I only know two people who are HIV positive and I remember being utterly horrified when one of them disclosed this to me about 6 years or so ago. Working in drug treatment I am so aware of the risks of blood borne viruses , and one of the reasons that Needle Exchange Programmes were developed was to help reduce the transmission of HIV infections. Admittedly these days we are less worried about HIV than we are about Hepatitis C but that is another story.
Stephen Fry's documentary gave me lots to think about. Not least he starting me thinking how wonderful the advances in medical science have been. There are so many more people who are HIV positive and living lives which are full and satisfying. However, these people are generally in the developed world. The HIV and AIDS epidemic in Africa was described as being 'out of control' and there is just not enough drug therapy available to be able to treat all the people who are positive. Surely, there is enough to go around? One of the reasons that was given for this lack of treatment was due to corruption in African governments. How terrible that people are not only dying from civil war, poverty, starvation and lack of clean drinking water, but also from lack of basic care for an illness that can now be controlled in most cases.