Our Christmas campaign this year focuses on challenging stigma

In Atlanta last week at the launch of the campaign – where a gay black man has a 50 per cent chance of contracting HIV – our US correspondent Andrew Buncombe interviewed someone who was told to keep her status as a secret ‘between her and God’

For our Christmas campaign, we have partnered with the Elton John AIDS Foundation to raise funds for their vital programmes around the world. From testing to treatment, their work, with local organisations around the world, is aimed at helping to create a world which is Aids-free.

While the HIV virus and Aids disease still, for many, can carry stigma and shame, with access to education and treatment, the situation now is far from removed from the doom-laden message of the 1980s.

As part of our campaign, we will be speaking to people affected by HIV/Aids around the world and reporting on their stories. Our correspondents in the US, and in Kiev and Delhi, are meeting with beneficiaries and with EJAF partner staff around the world to hear these extraordinary stories of ordinary lives. These are people who received an HIV diagnosis but who are living fulfilled, successful and resolutely “normal” lives in the wake of it.

Our campaign – which the UK government has promised to match pound for pound, up to £2m – only started this week, but we have already heard inspiring stories from Atlanta, where a gay black man has a 50 per cent chance of contracting HIV in his lifetime.

In the city last week for the launch of the campaign, our US editor Andrew Buncombe met with Antoinette Jones, who learned of her HIV status at the age of nine. “Because of stigma, I was told I couldn’t share the secret with anybody – it was a secret between myself and God,” she told him.

Now, at 23, she works to help others affected by HIV, providing counselling and performing diagnostic tests. “I have to tell them HIV is no longer a death sentence and that the stigma is based on everything you were told in 1988, it’s not relevant today. It’s not based on fact,” she said.

When people have the access to information and education surrounding the need for HIV testing and treatment, this can help lead to a world where people know their status, receive the right treatment, and are ultimately unable to pass on the virus.

As Sir Elton John and Evgeny Lebedev, proprietor of The Independent, said at the launch of the AIDSfree campaign: “The challenge is that too many people still do not realise they are at risk, are too afraid of the stigma or are denied the chance of taking an HIV test.

“That is why we are raising awareness in cities around the world to combat the shame associated with HIV; to promote safe, affordable testing; and to help link people who need HIV treatment to the right care.”

Yours,

Olivia Alabaster

Deputy international editor