Cliff Joannou met the singer/activist at the Terrence Higgins Trust 30th anniversary reception at City Hall. She shared these words with us…
Half of the people living with HIV that we know about in the UK are living here in London. It’s absolutely appropriate that the Mayor and his team acknowledge this and support this. When you have the people in power give their acknowledgment and support, that is when you can really start making significant changes.
There has been tremendous fatigue and people don’t really want to know about HIV. It doesn’t make front-page headlines as much as it should. Still people don’t know to get tested, they don’t want to know, it is a form of denial.
This is why I approached the Mayor and I asked him to make me an HIV Ambassador, because this issue so desperately needs spokespeople. It so desperately needs the young people that are most in need and most vulnerable to infection to become the new spokespeople, not just people like me. I wear this t-shirt with tremendous pride because I am saying with this statement that ‘it exists, here it is’.
I got involved because this issue jumped up and grabbed me.
People are complacent in the UK and it worries me. It’s wonderful that you have a magazine that goes out for free, because people can pick it up and the dialogue is the important thing. If you don’t have a platform for the issue, it’s just going to disappear from discussion.
It’s ironic because HIV and AIDS is an issue that has to do with sex, but it’s not a sexy issue. Nobody wants to put it on the front pages of their newspapers, they just want to look away from it.
It’s not an easy thing to face, and I understand that, but here’s another complacency: the drugs came in, people got access to drugs and treatment, but HIV is not a great lifestyle to have, nobody wants to have this virus. I just met a man who for 30 years has been living with the virus, and a lady who has been living with it for 25 years.
Both have to take medication at regular times, sometimes feeling a bit like a guinea pig, not quite knowing if this is a better treatment or if the side effects are coming. No one wants to be HIV+, no one does. But it isn’t a death sentence if you know your status, and you get tested, you can live! You can survive!
Putting your head in the sand, and this is in no way a moral judgment whatsoever, but if you’re having unprotected sex with a number of partners and you don’t know their status, and you don’t know your status, it’s a recipe for disaster.
“When you have the people in power give their acknowledgment and support – that is when you can really start making significant changes.”
I meet people who are HIV positive in Africa and they’re not afraid to tell me about their statics, it’s just part of the language. I went to Malawi over a year-and-a-half ago, and the entire village was having a dialogue about what they were going to do with regards to HIV: women, elders, children, everybody.
I know if I’d gone there seven years before, there would be no dialogue, and anybody disclosing their status would be stoned. They’d be ostracized, put out of the village, never to come back. The reason they could have that dialogue is because they’d been educated.
Oxfam had programs that taught everybody to look at the issue, to have a dialogue, to have communication. And everybody was like; ‘This isn’t about some odd people that get this. This is about me, my uncle, my sister, my brother, my mother, all of us. If we’re gonna survive, we need to have a dialogue and forget about stigma.’
If we don’t have dialogue, where are we going to go? I think the gay community could be the best advocates for HIV and AIDS.
The way that gay men and women back in the ‘80s got together and collaborated tooth and nail to get this issue addressed, I want to see them become the advocates for the people in the developing world that are still struggling to get access to treatments, and even to food. We have the benefit of this fantastic NHS system, access to treatment and information – why not become advocates for people that don’t. That’s proud, that’s strong!
