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

Mon Aug 26 10:50:37 PDT 2013

Agreed! It is the old puritanical ethics showing ... and that kind of
language implies that some people with HIV are guilty and others are
innocent.
M

On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 6:49 AM, Romari <romariundi at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thank you Denise for bringing this article to my attention.
>
> I don't get the Times Colonist but after reading this, I recalled someone
> mentioned to me that they too had read something about HIV in the
> aboriginal community recently. I have now done a search and there has been
> a whole series on HIV in the Times Colonist! It is great that they are
> giving it this much attention and from several angles.
>
> However, I agree with your point about promiscuity! So very irritating
> that they can write these articles to inform people and hope to reduce
> stigma and yet mess up there!
>
> Romari
>
> On Aug 25, 2013, at 8:15 PM, Denise Becker <dbecker106 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> While I think this is a great article, I do not like this paragraph:
>
> 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.
>
> Since when has "promiscuity" been one of the traditional risk factors for
> a heterosexual woman?  I would think that a traditional risk factor was
> having sex, not necessarily promiscuity!!!!
>
> Denise
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 25, 2013 at 2:32 PM, Margarite Sanchez <
> margaritesanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 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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>>
>
>
> --
> www.denise-becker.com
> Queen's Gold Jubilee Medal
> Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal
> cell: 250-870-1714
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