Life as an HIV counselor is different now that there is hope

If you are a person living with HIV, you will know that it makes a big difference when people first consider you as a person, and that the virus is just a chronic disease like all the others you live with.

Every year on World AIDS Day, December 1, organizations like the New Zealand AIDS Foundation work to raise awareness and funds for people living with one of the most stigmatized diseases in the world. world. It is also a day dedicated to understanding the AIDS pandemic and mourning those who died at the height of its heyday in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Hilary Gerrard, a nurse from Edinburgh, has been working in the HIV / AIDS sector since 1985, "even before she knew how it was transmitted," she says. Gerrard has been working in Auckland for 10 years as an HIV / AIDS counselor and is a counselor on HIV and sexual health.

Much of the work demystifies people's beliefs about HIV, she says. "Much of the perception of HIV is still based on that time of the 1980s when [society and governments] did a good job in making people really scared, "she says.

READ MORE:
* Lyn Parent is tattooed – this choice has earned her fight against HIV for 25 years
* As the number of people with HIV increases, advocates call for better access to medicines
* Revolutionary drug for HIV prevention may soon be available in New Zealand

"It was a time when there was very little hope, but in 1996, combination therapy (formerly called" AIDS cocktail ") was introduced and we very quickly saw a dramatic improvement in life quality."

Gerrard believes it was a privilege to work in the area of ​​HIV / AIDS-related health at the height of the pandemic. "It hurt me a lot, I always thought," It could be me, "she says.

"Some colleagues might say," Do you think you should attend staff luncheons because of your partner? "But there was never any fear in the room – it was a bonding experience – we were all together."

Thanks to worldwide research funding, scientific innovations have allowed HIV to move from something that requires a comfortable death to a chronic disease where people live fully, in a normal way, with undetectable HIV status (c can not transmit the disease), and do everything by just taking one pill a day.

"Combination therapy was essential in the beginning, then from 2004 to 2011, we observed the steady improvement of drugs, and now people living with HIV both have children. [at one end of the spectrum] and become grandparents [at the other end]. "

Abigail Buchhalter, who lives in Wellington, is also an HIV / AIDS counselor. She has been a counselor in the United States, most recently in Boston, for more than five years, and started working specifically in the HIV / AIDS sector eight months ago.

"One of the real benefits I see in New Zealand is its size." The efforts to reduce stigma are more focused because there are actually only three major metropolitan areas, so the messages are transmitted quickly ".

Buchhalter is passionate about working with people living with HIV (most of her clients have a positive status) since she started her internship at the New Zealand AIDS Foundation.

"The job really is to reduce shame and stigma, whether it's internal [from the client’s perspective]and / or society, "she explains.

"At the heart of everything, as for any advice, it is about human connection. [This is] This is particularly important because we provide a free counseling service in a country where mental health services are otherwise expensive. "

HIV is a disease and does not discriminate. It affects men, women and children of all nationalities, sexual orientations and socio-economic groups.

Last year, there were 197 new HIV diagnoses in New Zealand. "Support is what people living with HIV need," says Gerrard. "They need a noncritical space on the part of the family and all the others.

"There is still a lot of criticism of sexual health, and when a person gets a positive result, it is just plain unlucky, nobody wants to get it, people living with HIV are just people. as you and I define them, and that does not change them. "