HIV ignorance isn’t bliss

Monday, November 21, 2016

HIV ignorance isn’t bliss

A Massey University academic specialising in research on HIV/AIDS says the disease will endure as long as there is stigma, ignorance and a lack of political will to tackle it.

December 1 is World AIDS Day with the United Nations theme “Hands Up for #HIV Prevention”. But Associate Professor Mark Henrickson says his students struggle when asked to identify the ways HIV is transmitted.

“I am astonished and disappointed, but no longer surprised that students can’t tell me the way HIV can be passed on,” he says.

“For all the amazing and life-enhancing advances in the treatment of HIV over the past three decades, education around prevention is the most effective public response. Today, not a single additional person needs to be infected with HIV, because we know how to prevent it.

“Yet here in New Zealand we still struggle to attract public and political attention to the response to HIV.”

Dr Henrickson says recently the government drastically cut funding to prevention education and to HIV-related research in communities of men who have sex with men.

“Despite the evidence, there has also been very little effective response to HIV in Black African new settler communities by any agency, public or not for profit. Young people exploring their identities and relationships are the new communities most at risk, because they do not have the historical understanding of what HIV has done to the world, to communities, and to individuals,” Dr Henrickson says.

“We are better positioned than ever to eliminate HIV in our lifetime, but it will still take a coordinated response by funders, agencies, policymakers and communities to do this. It will take renewed government commitment. No community can be ignored, and no community can be stigmatised.”

Dr Henrickson says in order to eliminate HIV and the stigma around it, all health and social care workers need to be educated about the real, not imagined, risks of HIV. “All health and social care workers must understand HIV, not just those working with people living with HIV. Eliminating HIV requires every New Zealander to put their hand up to challenge stigma and racism everywhere we encounter it.

“Unfortunately, even here in New Zealand, we are still challenging ignorance, stigma, and the lack of political will to respond to HIV. And that, sadly, means HIV is likely to be around for a long time,” Dr Henrickson says.

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