Good bye to Stigmatisation

AIDS has always been a stigmatised disease since its origin due to its connection with sexual promiscuity, causing people to shun talking about it, labelling the epidemic and its sufferers negatively. Do you remember those times when one could not even greet a person with HIV? And during those days, there wasn't a clear line between HIV and AIDS. It just sounded the same to most people. It was believed that once you were tested HIV positive, you automatically had AIDS. Back then, life was hopeless. Being HIV was the most feared thing. Though I stand to be corrected, I feel it was worse than being shot with a gun or dying itself. But with information and medical interventions it has become socially acceptable.

Diseases like AIDS depended on the media to be understood as it had transcended from a mystery to a controllable disease because of research and medical interventions which made it possible to at least control it.

There is no other way to go about it. It works both ways

There were lot of things that stigmatised AIDS considering that there was little knowledge about it. People depended on its characteristics sometimes misconceptions, some called it the slimming disease. People were afraid to talk about it because they knew most cases were transmitted sexually and no one wanted to talk about their sex life.

In the beginning AIDS was a great mystery and people thought it originated from the primates-the animals.It was thought that when they slaughtered the animals they were exposed to the virus through the blood. This is how people thought the virus jumped from animals to human beings and made its way to North America before spreading to all parts of the world. There were medical outcries as specialists said there is something new and is deadly serious.

But, through vigorous health communication it has become possible to control the danger of AIDS and people today could live to old ages.