[Viva] Fwd: HIV/AIDS series: Island woman's life marked by stigma - News - Times Colonist

[Margarite Sanchez]

If you haven't come across this article yet ...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Roy Parish <royparish at shaw.ca>
Date: Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 9:10 AM
Subject: HIV/AIDS series: Island woman's life marked by stigma - News -
Times Colonist
To: Margarite Sanchez <margaritesanchez at gmail.com>


Hello Margi
Hope all is well with you and Alvaro.
Spotted this on FB and thought you, of all the friends I know, would relate.
 Luv
R
xo
29c today in Vancouver. Fantabulosa, bring it on. I bet your 'girls' are
thriving.
http://www.timescolonist.com/news/hiv-aids-series-island-woman-s-life-marked-by-stigma-1.571638

HIV/AIDS series: Island woman's life marked by stigma
[image: A3-0807-hiv-clr.jpg]
Nicole, now 30, was diagnosed with HIV at 21. Although she would like to
help combat the stigma attached to HIV, she keeps her illness a secret from
many in her life.  Photograph by: DARREN STONE, Times Colonist

At age 30, Nicole could be a poster woman for good looks and good health —
except for one issue she feels compelled to keep secret.

While her family and close friends know, she is very careful about telling
others that, at age 21, she was diagnosed with HIV.

The fair-haired, fit-looking woman is a divorced mother with two healthy
children, holds a good job and owns her home. She is a heterosexual woman
who had none of traditional risk factors for HIV, such as intravenous-drug
use or promiscuity, when she was diagnosed.

She’d love to let us use her last name to help lambaste the deep stigmas
that still exist about HIV, the lack of knowledge about how controllable it
is and how hard it would be for women like her to transmit the virus. But
as the sole support of her family and with a boss who has no idea of her
status, she just can’t risk it.

Nicole is deeply disturbed by the ungrounded belief in easy transmission
that is still widespread in society. Even some close friends aren’t keen on
her borrowing a hairbrush, or sipping from the same glass.

“Having this stigma is so anguishing,” she said. “It takes some of the
quality from my life.”
 Devastating diagnosis

She has no idea whether the man who passed HIV to her had any idea he was
infected. She found out as a result of routine blood work about 10 years
ago. She was so devastated her family doctor had to drive her home. She was
sick at the thought she might never be able to have kids or, worse, faced
imminent death.

Nicole managed to get on with her life. She met her husband, who was also
HIV positive, online. Neither of their children has HIV.

Now divorced, Nicole’s deepest wish is to find a partner, a father figure
for her children and a husband unafraid to love her. She has experienced
devastating setbacks on that score. She dated two men and, in each case,
when the time seemed right, she worked up the courage to them about her
status. She explained that experts in the field have assured her that there
is almost no chance she can transmit HIV to others. But, within 24 hours,
each man dropped contact with her.

That made her feel “discardable,” she said.

“My body has not been affected by [HIV], nor is it expected to. It’s
actually expected to be unaffected for the rest of my life. But my spirit
and my heart have been.”

That’s why, she said, she wants to fight stigma around HIV.
 New treatment, new hope

The B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS also wants to get out the word
that taking HAART — a landmark mixture of highly active anti-retroviral
therapy — reduces the level of HIV in the blood and sexual fluids to
undetectable levels, dramatically decreasing the likelihood of HIV
transmission, said Kevin Hollett, the centre’s communications co-ordinator.

HIV transmission by heterosexual contact accounted for about 22 per cent of
the 238 new HIV cases in B.C. in 2012 — or about 52 new cases, down from 75
in 2011.

That’s far less than the 63 per cent transmitted by men having unprotected
sex with men, but nearly double the 12 per cent transmission rate via
intravenous-drug use, according to figures from the B.C. Centre for Disease
Control.

There’s no reason for Nicole not to have a healthy sexual relationship
without fear of transmitting HIV, said Dr. Julio Montaner, one of the
world’s pre-eminent HIV/AIDS experts.

Montaner, a professor of medicine at the University of B.C., said that
thanks to HAART — a therapy that he helped develop — Nicole’s viral load is
undetectable and, as such, it is not possible for her to transmit HIV to
others.

The virus that was often death sentence when Nicole was a child is now a
chronic illness that can be well managed in many people.

“Twenty years ago, a woman infected with HIV at age 20 would be told,
‘Sorry, you have a disease that is going to kill you prematurely, you’re
going to have a very rocky course ahead, you are basically not going to
have a normal reproductive life,’ ” Montaner said.

“Today, a 20-year-old woman who comes to my office for the first time and
has an HIV diagnosis, yes, it’s a problem, but we have a strategy. The
treatments are highly effective, they are simple, they are formulated into
one pill once a day, most of the time.”

A 20-year-old woman diagnosed today with HIV and given anti-retroviral
drugs can expect to live in good health until the age of 73, Montaner said.
He’s hesitant to call it a normal life-span “because anything that requires
treatment, by definition, is not normal. But I usually [say] near-normal
longevity and a very high quality of life.”

Twenty years ago, Montaner would have had to advise Nicole not to have
children. Now he can say, “You will be there to nurture your children and
you will be there to see your grandchildren.”

Moreover, B.C. Women’s Hospital researchers have developed a drug regimen
that has prevented births of any HIV-positive babies in B.C. in the last 15
years to HIV-positive mothers who underwent a full anti-retroviral regime.
 The toll of stigma

Even though Nicole has a nice life by anyone’s standards — something that
can’t be said of impoverished injection-drug users, for instance — the HIV
stigma must take a toll on her well-being, said Katrina Jensen, executive
director of AIDS Vancouver Island.

“You can’t underestimate the impact that stigma and discrimination have on
someone’s health … no matter how privileged they may seem. If they’re part
of a group that experiences a lot of stigma, that is bad for their health,”
Jensen said.

As a woman in her childbearing years, Nicole only recently began to take
medication — four pills a day. She continues to have routine blood work
done to monitor her T-cell counts and viral load.

“Now that I’m on medication, it is likely I will have undetectable viral
load for the rest of my life,” she said.

As her children grow up, Nicole doesn’t want them to feel there’s something
wrong or shameful about their family. They’re too young to understand the
implications of HIV. She regrets she can’t use her surname to defy the
stigma and help normalize HIV. She’s got a mortgage to pay, kids to
support, a job to do and a public image she doesn’t want to tarnish by
untruths. She’s not willing to be “a sacrificial lamb,” but she wants
people to remember her story when they hear about someone living with HIV.

kdedyna at timescolonist.com
 A look at the numbers

• Number of people in Canada living with HIV, including those with AIDS, in
2011: 71,300

• Number of people in Canada living with HIV, including those with AIDS, in
2008: 64,000

• Number of people in B.C. living with HIV in 2011: 11,700

• Number of people in B.C. with AIDS in 2011: 70

• Number of people on Vancouver Island living with HIV in 2012: 888

• Number of new HIV infections in Canada in 2011: 3,175

• Number of new HIV infections in B.C. in 2012: 238

• Number of new HIV diagnoses on Vancouver Island, from 2008 to 2012: 159

• Rate of new HIV infections in Canada in 2011: 7.6 per 100,000 people

• Rate of new HIV infections in B.C. in 2012: 5.2 per 100,000

• Rate of new HIV infections on Vancouver Island, from 2008 to 2012: 4.2
per 100,000

• Rate of new HIV infections on Vancouver Island in 2012: 3.4 per 100,000

• Percentage of cases in B.C. in 2012 in which HIV transmission caused by:

- gay, bisexual contact: 63

- heterosexual contact: 22

- intravenous-drug use: 12

• Annual cost of HAART anti-retroviral treatment: $15,600

• Lifetime cost of HAART anti-retroviral treatment: $500,000

• Number of HIV blood screens done on pregnant women in B.C. in 2011: 46,910

• Number of HIV-positive babies born in last 15 years to mothers who
underwent full anti-HIV drug therapy: 0

• Annual deaths due to AIDS in B.C. in 2011: 59

• Annual deaths due to AIDS in B.C. in 1996: 253

• Annual deaths due to AIDS in Canada in 2009: 355

• Annual deaths due to AIDS in Canada in 1995: 1,764

*Sources: B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, Statistics Canada,
Vancouver Island Health Authority and B.C. Centre for Disease Control, B.C.
Women’s Hospital & Health Centre Foundation*

© Copyright 2013
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