Our Medical Director, Dr Steve Taylor, has begun a regular blog at the Huffington Post’s UK edition with a piece on how stigma can still kill:
One of my patients said to me recently: “When I was young I had unprotected sex a few times, so did my friends. Unfortunately it was me who became infected, and they didn’t. Why do I have to live with this shame, as if I did something terribly wrong? I had unprotected sex – that’s it!”
They were right: there’s nothing to judge negatively in that story, or any of the others which feature on our charity’s ‘Positive People’ webpages. Yet stigma continues to be a real problem for those living with HIV, and even for those simply trying to promote better understanding of the infection. The fact is, this unthinking prejudice is endangering peoples’ health … and costing lives.
