TEN people are infected with HIV every minute of every day.
Five people worldwide die of AIDS every minute of every day.
HIV has hit every corner of the globe, infecting more than 42 million men, women and children
This year alone, five million people became infected with virus and three million died – the highest ever.
These are the harsh findings detailed in “AIDS Epidemic Update 2003”, a comprehensive new report on the global HIV/AIDS epidemic issued by UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation (WHO) in advance of World AIDS Day tomorrow.
“Despite significant funding to fight the epidemic both by individual governments and through the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria… these alarming statistics highlight how the epidemic is continuing its lethal march around the world, with few signs of slowing down,” said UN Secretary-general Kofi Annan, in his World AIDS Day speech.
“HIV/AIDS is spreading at an alarming rate among women, who now account for half of those infected worldwide. And the epidemic is expanding most rapidly in regions which had previously been largely spared – especially in Eastern Europe and across all of Asia, from the Urals to the Pacific Ocean,” said Annan.
This year, the UK’s leading HIV/AIDS policy and advocacy organisation, National AIDS Trust, said its World AIDS Day campaign aims to increase awareness of HIV-related stigma and discrimination, two of the major factors fuelling the global HIV epidemic, creating a climate of fear and ignorance and a reluctance to confront rising infection rates. Earlier in the year, it launched an ongoing campaign “Are You HIV Prejudiced”, which aims to combat HIV stigma and discrimination in the UK and beyond.
UNAIDS has also targeted HIV-related stigma and discrimination in a two-year initiative to reduce the harmful effects faced by people living with HIV.
Two years ago, the world’s nations had agreed that defeating HIV/AIDS would require commitment, resources and action. At the General Assembly’s Special Session on HIV/AIDS in 2001, they adopted the Declaration of Commitment, a set of specific, time-bound targets for fighting the epidemic. By 2005, nations agreed they should have cut by a quarter the number of young people infected with HIV in the worst affected countries; the rate at which infants become infected should be halved; and comprehensive care programmes should be in place everywhere.
But several of the Declaration’s targets have failed. Worse yet, at the current rate, none of those targets will be achieved in two years time, Annan said.
“We must keep AIDS at the top of our political and practical agenda,” he stressed.
“That is why we must continue to speak up openly about AIDS. No progress will be achieved by being timid, refusing to face unpleasant facts, or prejudging our fellow human beings – still less by stigmatising people living with HIV/AIDS. Let no one imagine that we can protect ourselves by building barriers between ‘us’ and ‘them’. In the ruthless world of AIDS, there is no ‘us’ and ‘them’. And in that world, silence is death.”
HIV carriers and AIDS patients in Cyprus are no stranger to stigma and discrimination. The pain and isolation they suffer makes this disease an even heavier burden to carry.
The AIDS Support Centre (KYFA), Cyprus’ only AIDS volunteer organisation has stories that would pain even the coldest of hearts.
“They feel very lonely and are ostracised and sidelined from the rest of society. Many feel like committing suicide,” KYFA president, Stella Michaelides, told the Sunday Mail. “Very often they isolate themselves as a defence mechanism because they are afraid that once their colleagues or friends find out they will lose them. They know this because it has happened before and it leaves them feeling very hurt and afraid to talk to people or to make new friends.”
She said some families did not even know their children or siblings were sick. Others feared to say anything to their employers after hearing stories that HIV positive patients were made redundant when their sickness was exposed.
One time, a social worker asked an AIDS patient who cleaned his home and asked whether his sister – who had undertaken the job – wore gloves to do so.
“Gloves to clean the furniture! What sort of prejudice is this? We are entering Europe and yet we live in the Stone Age. We have to throw this wall of prejudice down. We need to open up peoples’ eyes and to better inform the public,” she said.
She said the problem was not dealt with or looked upon like any other disease, such as cancer.
“I have lived through the prejudice they do and have had people refuse to shake my hand because I’m in the company of an HIV positive person.”
Sufferers were discriminated against because the problem itself was also stigmatised in Cyprus, said Michaelides. “Nobody wants to touch this problem. It doesn’t exist as far as many people are concerned. Just like we didn’t have a drugs problem five years ago and now suddenly everyone has realised that in fact we did.”
In fact, given the growing drugs problem in Cyprus, officials should be concerned that global statistics suggest five per cent of all intravenous drug users will become infected with HIV.
“People here live with the false belief that AIDS is a homosexual disease. That is a fairy tale. The increasing number of HIV sufferers concerns women and children between the ages of 15 and 25. They are infected through heterosexual intercourse and intravenous drugs.”
The government should be informing the public by talking about the topic on television, handing out pamphlets, showing films and giving lectures.
“We only remember AIDS on December 1 and then we forget about it. But, that’s not the only day of the year you can become infected,” Michaelides said.
“We have to treat all our sexual partners like they are HIV positive and take precautions because they might not even know they have been infected.”
Although modern medicine has prolonged the lifespan of HIV carriers, “the point is people should not be getting infected and it is better to focus on prevention than the cure”.
Two years ago, KYFA opened an office at the old Limassol hospital, which operates between 9am and 1pm and offers both emotional and financial support to sufferers.
Two psychologists work for the centre on a volunteer basis and three people also answer a helpline between 7pm and 11pm daily.
Unfortunately, there is no AIDS hospice in Cyprus. In the past, the government tried to put an end-stage AIDS patient in the psychiatric hospital because the disease had affected his brain. “They had nowhere to put him and so decided that would be the best place. In the end, I had to intervene and they allowed him to live out the rest of his days at the Gregoriou AIDS clinic in Larnaca.”
Although KYFA volunteers have asked to give talks in schools, they were not granted permission and were told that schools undertook that responsibility. But her children, both in their late teens, have never been taught anything on the subject during school hours.
The centre has also been waiting for an answer its plans to build a “Home of Love” where sufferers can get together and have social gatherings. The building itself will be built with money raised through fundraising.
“We have asked to rent land in the Limassol area at a low rent and have been waiting for an answer for a year. Had we been asking for a cabaret licence our request would already have been granted,” she said.
For the time being, KYFA holds social evenings twice a week to allow sufferers to get together and have a chat. Without those nights, they would have no one. “They only have us. Sometimes it takes time for HIV/AIDS sufferers to approach us because
they are afraid, but we don’t judge. We just welcome and listen.”
The KYFA centre and helpline number is 25-340305.
