World AIDS Day - 2023

So many friends I lost

I have lost many friends to HIV/AIDS, the first person I met who had HIV and was released from prison in France on compassionate grounds was trying to write his story with no idea of what time he had left. I had gone to help him out, on his computer; he passed on in late 1991.

Another was an opera buff, full of life, an exciting conversationalist with a predilection to a certain type. A very good friend that I had known for just over 3 years. When we gathered for his 37^th birthday, it was both a joyful party celebrating his survival and a sombre meeting that suggested we might not have another. A few months later, he had a two-page spread of a tribute-cum-obituary in the Guardian in 1994.

I guess from the late 1990s, people were not as scared of HIV, and medications were coming on-stream to deal with the worst vestiges of HIV or the progression into AIDS if the issues were attended to promptly.

Change and change together

In 2000, I emigrated to the Netherlands, and I also met many people who were living with HIV all around Europe. They seem to keep a low profile when they fell ill, and then they returned to the scene usually to tell of their ordeal and their escape from tragedy.

Also, especially with young men, some on receiving a diagnosis literally gave up and were ready to end their lives. I found myself in the role of someone who gave a new perspective to things that it was an opportunity to consider a new lease of life that makes a difference for themselves and others. Many of them are thriving and are thankfully still with us today.

When in September 2002, I received an HIV+ result, I vacillated between a fatalistic view of things and a progressively positive perspective. I had determined it would not be the cause of my demise much as I did not attend to the issues that might arise.

I sought a miraculous touch

I probably wanted something miraculous than consequential medical intervention. I attribute that sense to the kind of religious beliefs I had mostly been exposed to.

To that end, as my health began to deteriorate with the advent of AIDS in the time from mid-2008 onwards, I felt I was still doing fine until what presented as athlete’s foot was determined to be an aggressive skin cancer, kaposi’s sarcoma. Now, that was life-threatening, and in September 2009 I came upon the full diagnosis that was treatable if I responded to the treatment or in the words of my consultant, I probably had only 5 weeks to live.

My response to the treatment from medical observation was by its rapidity from arresting AIDS, clearing up the skin lesions and fungating tumours, and bringing my viral load to undetectable levels, miraculous. My body was saved, but everything else lost, that I had to start all over again.

What works, works well

In that time, I lost other good friends who had HIV to other attendant ailments that might or may not have been related to HIV.

I am fortunate and grateful, and the antiretroviral medication works for me, I have been on the same regimen for over 13 years with no need or inclination to change it for anything else. My biannual checkups keep a view on all the internal and organ functions allowing my medical team to address issues with alacrity.

Obviously, there is the issue of stigma usually borne of fear and ignorance, you still need to be careful who you reveal your status to, especially where you are not aware of their understanding of developments and messages that now attend to the living with HIV.

My thoughts on World AIDS Day

World AIDS Day for me is a day of recognition and remembrance; the many amazing lives lost in their prime, the stories that did not get told, and the suffering that happened in the private and public compounded by prejudice and discrimination. The triumph of humanity over adversity and the celebration of life beyond infirmity and tragedy.

Most of all, it is one of possibilities; HIV is not a death sentence, it is the beginning of the answer to the question about living a fulfilling, glorious, and impactful life. For that, I want to tell stories, even better stories, and the best stories that Brian and I can write and tell together.

World AIDS Day – To life and living well.

World AIDS Day 2022

Beyond a fateful diagnosis

This is my 20^th World AIDS Day since my HIV positive diagnosis and I cannot tell for how long I might have contracted the virus before it was confirmed after a very developed and stringent testing regime, what matters is with a medical verification of my status, certain things needed to change.

I guess what changed the most in my life was my outlook between the idea that I might not have much time left to doing everything possible to enjoy whatever time I am fortunate to have to tell a better story beyond diagnosis.

Yet, living with HIV brought both adventure and the mundane, the mundane as in as the virus ravaged my body, I ignored what the consequences might be as year after year others noticed my apparently failing health.

The onset of AIDS

It was in the 7^th year of my diagnosis that things took a turn for the worse, early in year, much as I was in my professional peak, a dark brownish stain appeared under my left sole, something I dismissed as athlete’s foot and on inspection by a doctor in Spain, never came to much of a comment. Yet, I was conscious enough to want to hide expanding dark mark when I was reclining in a deck chair by the pool, because someone did come to ask about it.

By Spring, my energy levels were down, I spent Easter in Geneva with my best friend after which I was back on the job market. Then by mid-Summer I had a bout of shingles that came and went in 2 weeks with the blessing of no post-hepatic neuralgia, though my foot was now becoming a problem.

What was manifesting in August was a painful sore that I could not walk without my foot being heavily bandaged and no amount of painkillers could assuage the pain, I tested the limits of my ability to endure pain. I had developed full-blown AIDS presenting as Kaposi’s sarcoma, a virulent skin cancer and it was screaming on my left foot.

The legacy of the early sufferers

My gratitude and good fortune for the sadness and the celebration of World AIDS Day comes from the fact that many young men perished because of AIDS and the lack of help to treat the diseases that came as a result of contracting the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), many also had the painful lesions of Kaposi’s sarcoma leading to fully emaciated and painful deaths.

When I went into hospital delirious in pain after my doctor in the Netherlands instituted emergency measures to get me seen by specialists because on the first sight of my foot, she said, “This looks serious, I need to refer you.” The professor who came down to see me immediately said, “We have a bed for you upstairs.”

I was at the point where advancements in HIV medicine gave the consultant the confidence that medicine did not have a decade before, because he said, “We can treat this, but it depends on how you can take the treatment.” The prognosis was I would be fine if I could tolerate the treatment, or I will be gone in 5 weeks if I could not.

Indeed, my survival comes down to the many whose treatments that variously failed but redounded to the body of knowledge and expertise that grew over decades, I am one of the fortunate ones who came back from the looking death in the face to live and thrive. It always gives me pleasure to interact with medical students when they attend my biannual consultations, because I hope that in some small way, I inspire them about the power and miracle of progressive medicine that can treat diseases that were once untreatable.

On celebrating World AIDS Day

This is what World AIDS Day means to me, the need to know your status and embrace the result with promptly accessing medical options available. In 2002, you were not immediately put on antiretrovirals, even in 2005, they were thinking of treating a Vitamin B deficiency rather than the virus.

World AIDS Day is about everyone affected and infected, privately or publicly, silently or in advocacy, proudly or stigmatised, we need to come out and bring an end to the scourge of HIV whilst making the very efficacious treatments freely available to everyone touched by HIV. I am also grateful to the health services in The Netherlands and the UK, the consultants, doctors, nurses and personnel who have devoted time and resources to seeing the end of HIV.

And where would I be without the support of friends, family, neighbours, lovers, and the wider community that blessed me with their humanity and generosity, to them all, I owe a debt of unstinting gratitude. I am blessed.

Here’s to World AIDS Day 2022 because there is still much to be done and I hope that when the work is complete, it would be celebrated in memory of the many who sacrificed life and being to bring an end to HIV and AIDS.

World AIDS Day 2021 - A reflection

I was unpersuaded

World AIDS Day is what I mostly celebrate in quiet contemplation rather than with fanfare and symbolism. I reflect on the life that I have lived, the good fortune that has smiled on me and the privilege of living at a time when possibilities existed long after all hope was literally lost.

I have been living with HIV as diagnosed since September 2002, I might well have had it for much longer, I cannot tell. At diagnosis, I threw caution to the winds and lived in a careless and carefree world, almost daring the worst to happen, like I was invincible and inviolable.

In mid-2005, I attended a medical check-up where the consultant proposed a regime of strong Vitamin B medication with some prophylaxis to protect my kidneys, it seemed a rather severe action to take when I was not presenting any issues. For that consultation, however, my wallet was lightened by €1,800. The knowledge and experience made me quite averse to learning more about what more I could do, including getting a second opinion.

The signs were screaming

By late 2008, the chef de reception, Javier, at one of my holiday haunts had noticed things about my pallor and wellbeing, he suggested I have my health checked out, I went through the motions but did not do a lot about it. Then in June 2009, some friends came to visit me in Amsterdam, and we went out to Kinderdijk to see the windmills, but on our way back, I was overcome with tiredness and weakness I had never experienced before, on the day they left, I broke out with shingles.

Blog - Javier

Meanwhile, I was nursing what I thought was athlete’s foot on the sole of my left foot, it was not clearing up, it was getting painful and beginning to weep. Another part of my folly kicked in, I seemed to desire more miraculous healing than a medical intervention. All that messing around in me, I still travelled to Berlin for the Christopher Street Day celebrations, then returned home to nurse myself back to a semblance of health.

Laying on of wands

In August, the foot became even more bothersome, and I was still desperately seeking some sudden rather than a gradual easing of my pain. A visit to a friend who was able to persuade me to attend her birthday, having recently had cancer in remission, she introduced me to new pain medication, which helped a bit as I endured in my foolishness.

I travelled to London in early September to attend a church service with Jerry Savelle, a word of faith preacher ministering, who laid hands on me, and I felt nothing, but it was at that point that came to my senses, I think. It was not going to be a magical moment.

I showed my best friend my foot and told him how I was suffering, not giving him the time to even say much than just acknowledge that he might just lose me. I told him; I had allowed my condition to deteriorate to a stage that I might have no other options left.

Only left with Plan B

Returning home to Amsterdam, I sorted out my insurance provisions and visited my doctor on an emergency appointment because I was in excruciating pain. She took one look at my foot and immediately said, this looks serious, I need to refer you. There and then she booked an appointment with the hospital, dressed my foot and prescribed some strong painkillers. My visit to the hospital two days later called for a further referral which was scheduled for the Tuesday after the weekend, once I told them I was HIV positive, they had reached conclusions I was yet to realise.

The HIV until September 2009 had been untreated since the September 2002 diagnosis and what was presenting was evident immunodeficiency, opportunistic infections, and the heretofore untreatable athlete’s foot, was in fact, Kaposi’s Sarcoma (a kind of skin cancer), I had full-blown AIDS.

I am fortunate and privileged

What World AIDS Day means to me is even in that extremely dire situation, I lived in a country with healthcare, service and support to attend to my immediate need, that there was an extremely high level of medical competence and expertise available to me without castigation or judgement, I just presented a challenge they had met many times before.

Fundamentally, they had confidence borne of experience and understanding drawn from the many cases and lives before mine whose contributions to the body of knowledge in the management and treatment of HIV and AIDS whether they survived or not meant that people like me had better chances of survival. I was not a lost cause.

Your miracle is in medicine

Indeed, it was a medical intervention that saved me, I did not abandon my religious beliefs, for that really helped me keep my mind and my head through the toughest times and I have told of that in many stories. I have by adversity been won to the miracle of medicine and medical expertise, why it matters, and it is not a negation or a repudiation of any other belief system, it is as much a gift to humanity as it is the emancipation and progression of civilisation.

You ask, how could someone so westernised, educated, enlightened and knowledgeable have allowed his condition to deteriorate to such a life-threatening situation? Then you begin to understand that the strengths and weaknesses of our humanity are myriad, amid apparent wisdom and knowledge can be stark ignorance, irrationality, stupidity and worse. Sometimes, we just need to forgive our own stupidity so we can learn to use a bit of wisdom.

Let’s just say, we have been steeped in such bad education that the process of unlearning to allow some new learning can be painfully difficult and consequently life-affirming. I am well, healthier than I have been in decades, on antiretroviral medication with an undetectable viral load for over 12 years. All thanks to medicine and the wealth of lives and deaths that have made it possible for all of us living with HIV to be productive members of our small and large communities. This needs to be shared around the world more.

Happy World AIDS Day!

Blogs – The Cancer Tales.

World AIDS Day 2020

Of hopes and aspirations

World AIDS Day, a time to reflect on experiences and life, the sufferings and the blessings, along with the prospect of things to come. During this Coronavirus pandemic time, I would think many of us were first concerned that we would have to shield way back in March and then we learnt that if our CD4 cell counts exceeded a particular number and we had an undetectable viral load, we were safe, yet had to be careful.

We have endured many false dawns of HIV/AIDS cures, either functional or actual, the quest for a vaccine, remains just that, a quest. The antiretroviral drugs that I have been on since the 30^th of September 2009, with one change and the trial of a third that I aborted because of horrible side effects have given me a productive and rewarding quality of life. I am very grateful.

Of knowledge and action

It is important we all know our status regardless of activities and take advantage of the wealth of knowledge accumulated over 3 decades that makes the treatment and management of HIV easier and better than it has ever been. We should not be afraid to get tested and avail ourselves of the extensive support systems that will help with the radical adjustment to life, livelihood, and happiness after a positive HIV result.

I remember when I developed full-blown AIDS in 2009 with opportunistic infections and Kaposi’s Sarcoma manifesting as an aggressive fungating tumour and cancer on the soles of my feet, it is the body of knowledge acquired that gave my consultant the confidence to say it can be treated and if I responded, I will come out alright. The prognosis without that knowledge would have been just 5 weeks. It is the same type of cancer that killed Fela Anikulapo-Kuti just 12 years before my own diagnosis.

Blog - Remembering Fela (1938 - 1997) through our shared history of AIDS

Blog - A primer on cancer and chemotherapy

Of life and possibility

Obviously, there is still work to do, knowing that you can still live a full productive life and go on the adventure of life, experience and achievement without fear, dealing with the stigma that associates with HIV is still an area in need of enlightenment, information and education, then most of all, if we have HIV under control, we have a passionately wonderful sex life and even have children, for it is the accepted fact today that if you are Undetectable then the virus is Untransmittable to your partner. [NAM AIDSmap: What does undetectable = untransmittable (U=U) mean?]

Blog - Dealing with sexuality and HIV stigma

I have lost many friends along the way to the scourge of HIV, all from the early 1990s when treatments were not sufficiently good enough to give people the hope of survival. I remember them quite fondly, in their friendships and their adversity, they laid foundations on which we stand in the celebration of life.

More pertinently, I am thankful for the medical teams first in the Netherlands and continuously in the UK who took on the challenge of providing the most professional and rewarding medical care. Friends and acquaintances that were an immeasurable source of support and strength, to God who gives life and humanity, that mines the amazing resources of hope and innovation to give us better stories to tell.

Blog - Cancer is a human experience, not a battle won or lost

Blog - A decade from AIDS to life and living

World AIDS Day 2017

It’s strange, I’m in a different place,
As if I had run a really hard race,
In all the sweat and toil, I found grace,
No plans I made could ever retrace,
The steps that brought me to this place.

In the days and times of great pain,
Before my eyes, it laid so plain,
That the things I had worked hard to gain,
Were nothing if this scourge left me slain,
I learnt many lessons on the power of pain.

We who live as it courses through our veins,
And stand as beacons to hope that reigns,
With our HIV we run knowledge campaigns,
That AIDS and stigma won’t keep us in chains,
To know for sure, do take a prick to the veins.

With condoms maybe you’re protected,
Without it, know the risk of getting infected,
I take my ARVs as the doctor intended,
By PrEP or that, we know life is extended,
On being undetectable, we’re all protected.

The story that weaves a curtain of loss,
It was a death sentence not giving a toss,
Our knowns and holds beyond it cross,
Every World AIDS Day is not a gloss,
But one to give meaning and purpose to our loss.

World AIDS Day 2014

Today is World AIDS Day 2014.

Know your bodies

The stats may not be fully known, but the estimates are in the millions of those who have gone by reason of AIDS. Big names, somebodies, 'any bodies', nobodies, the first two probably knowing and finding some respite maybe in medicine to arrest the rampaging HIV that presents AIDS.

The 'any bodies' are those who probably do not know that they have HIV and might well learn that they have it when they have developed AIDS. Yet not all hope is lost, people with medical intervention have come back from the life-threatening claws of AIDS to live lives just affected by HIV.

The nobodies however are those who have despite knowledge of their conditions neither have access to treatments, monitoring or drugs to arrest HIV and eventually succumb to AIDS.

Knowledge is progress

My view of the World AIDS Day is for the 'any bodies' and nobodies to become somebodies, people who know their status because they have access to be tested regularly. Who when tested have the counselling and information to make informed choices and if found to be HIV positive have access to medical expertise and drugs to live productive lives.

Being infected with HIV does not have to be a life sentence, it is a manageable condition with easy to use medication and a wealth of support and expertise that means no one has to suffer alone.

Beyond this, we need to move beyond the stigma of HIV and AIDS. All sorts of circumstances might have brought on the disease by commission, omission, happenstance or accident, there is no need to be judged or be judgemental.

Knowing the truth

We also need to move the management of HIV/AIDS out of the domain of desperation where charlatans, snake-oil merchants and so-called faith healers prey on the vulnerable for profit and fame.

HIV/AIDS is a medical condition, first and foremost; any assumed or considered change to that condition must always be assessed fully from a medical perspective. This is regardless of whether the person believes they are healed or they believe progression of the disease has been halted.

It is pertinent that HIV/AIDS remains under the supervision of qualified medical personnel.

Know your life

And so, on this World AIDS Day, this is what I advise.

• ·         Know your status and renew this knowledge at least every year. Get TESTED regardless.
• ·         If your status indicates being HIV positive, seek immediate medical intervention, you might be put on ARVs and these drugs are usually free.
• ·         Do not for the fear of the knowledge of your status allow HIV to waste you away, there is abundant help for you to have a useful life.
• ·         If you have exposed yourself in unsafe activity, enquire if you can have access to PrEP, this like the morning after pill.
• ·         We are all sexual beings, it is a natural human need. Do not be embarrassed about your sexual life that you deny yourself opportunities to live longer after you have discovered you have a sexually transmitted infection, no matter how minor it looks, seek help and remedy.
• ·         Learn more about HIV/AIDS and know how to keep your health and yourself safe.

The AIDS Ribbon is courtesy of PhotoBucket

World AIDS Day 2013: Eleven years with HIV

Knowledge and discovery

We sat down to talk about living with HIV for over a decade and what it means for life and the pursuit of happiness.

He had known many people affected by HIV, but rarely met anyone who had succumbed to AIDS except for stories of people and the haunting pictures that accompanied the dying days of the famous in the early days of AIDS.

His arrival in the UK allowed him to explore a nature he knew he had from well before the age of 10, when he had his full sexual encounter with someone 6 years older.

Freedom for expression

In secondary school and later he found someone who shared a same sex inclination, and they found places and time to fulfil their passions, a situation that can be inhibited by the homophobia now being codified in the legal framework in Nigeria.

Apart from the occasional threats of blackmail, there were few with whom there was a sense of fulfilled sexual companionship, it was almost transactional.

The UK signalled freedom, the freedom to explore his sexuality without fear, and that was soon realised in a number of trysts; some lasted weeks, others lasted months until he found a soul mate that ushered in a relationship that lasted seven years.

Testing for inconvenience

He took a few sexual risks and went for check-ups that sometimes presented embarrassing results not helped by the kind of engagements and unsettling discussions with sexual health workers; this discouraged the prompt take-up of free services.

He took the HIV test up to three times a year, but he extracted an undertaking that they do not inform him of the results. He guessed the outcomes presented no need for the clinic to contact him urgently for a follow-up.

In September 2002, he went in for a sexual health check-up and by that time, he had decided he was ready for whatever the results were. By then, he was almost certain that the result will be positive and was already working on how to live life with such a prospect.

Knowledge and adjustment

The first result indicated a positive, but they took another test to be sure and that returned a positive, he had become a person living with HIV, and he adjusted his life to accommodate that reality by seeking out those with a similar health situation.

Many years passed with almost a sense of invincibility bordering of fatalism, much as he had a useful relationship, they both sought out multiple partners and yet for all they liked to do, they were almost teetotal, never did drugs but liked their sex along with the companionship, the travel and many other exciting things partners did for fun.

His HIV positive partner had long been on anti-retroviral (ARV) medication, but he paid no attention to what some others began to observe as failing health, probably the virus ravaging his body, rampaging through his veins and organs, untrammelled and unmanaged until 2009 when a rapid deterioration in health presented a life-threatening condition.

You have AIDS

Towards the end of that year, he was close to becoming an unusual AIDS statistic in Western Europe where medicine had already arrested the view of HIV being a terminal and precipitous condition that rapidly brought the scythe of the Grim Reaper to harvest another soul.

The intervention was late but just in time for medicine and medication to delay the possibility of impending death due to a seriously weakened immune system.

He had dabbled with a reckless carelessness to life, but mercifully, he won a new lease of life moving him out of the terrain of a person suffering AIDS back to just being a person living with HIV.

Life living with HIV

Within 8 weeks of taking on first-line treatment, the HIV virus had become undetectable in his bloodstream though it has taken much longer for his immune system to recover and move him out of the danger zone of opportunistic infections.

Now, four years down the line, he is much wiser and informed about HIV/AIDS issues, he has considered getting involved in activism and advocacy for the many with his kind of background who find it difficult to talk about sexuality and status considering the stigma that follows revealing such a condition to family and friends.

Know and act

I thought he had an interesting story to share about the need to know your status and the greater need to engage promptly the sexual health services that will provide better medical outcomes with timely intervention before HIV results in AIDS.

He has decided to start with sharing part of that long story of living with HIV and AIDS over the last 11 years on World AIDS Day, 2013.

Thank you.

You, Me and HIV – AVERT.org

World AIDS Day

HIV Test FAQs – AVERT.org

Living with HIV – Learning you are HIV Positive – AVERT.org

List of HIV/AIDS Medications

World AIDS Day: Banish the Ignorance

On HIV/AIDS

Today is World AIDS Day and it is important that we review where the discourse is going with regards to how it affects us either directly or indirectly.

Much as we reflect on and remember the many who have lost their lives to the disease prominent amongst whom is Fela Anikulapo-Kuti of Nigeria who we celebrate as a seer and keen observer of social issues that remain relevant today, there are people who live with HIV/AIDS and even many more who do not know that they have the virus.

How come this?

It is against this background that an article that was sent to me this morning written by a correspondent of the Nigerian Vanguard newspaper incensed me.

I have no reason to question the credentials of Dr. Nwokocha who apparently is the medical director of Hosanna Medical Centre in Lagos but I have great persuasion to question his reasoning.

On World AIDS Day, one will expect that news organs in Nigeria will find ways to educate the populace on the issues surrounding sexual health and the cause of the statistical disaster that suggested that there were up to 3.3 million diagnosed cases of HIV of which there were 220,000 deaths in 2009 and counting.

Predominantly heterosexual in Africa

Much as it is lazy and weak to moralise and get obsessed with the issue of HIV/AIDS and sexuality, the demographic in Africa is radically different from that which we find in the West, because it’s prevalence is driven by a heterosexual population in the former.

Obviously, the absence of the homosexual population from this data can be accounted for because of the cultural stigmas and homophobia driven by political opportunists and religious dogma – none of which helps any of the affected people regardless of their sexuality.

A medical emergency ignored

It goes without saying that there is a medical emergency to tackle amongst those who know they are infected but do not reveal their status, those who are infected and do not know they are and the innocent ones who by reason of being in diverse relationships with the other groups risk falling into either knowledge of their status or dying of brief but unexplained illnesses.

Amongst women, beyond maternal mortality there is also the risk of the transference of the infection from mother to child one would expect Dr. Nwokocha to be a very busy man.

Errors unforgivable

Looking at the article, I have to wonder if the horridness of the copy is journalistic incompetence compounded by medical quackery of the order that should call into review the medical nous Dr. Nwokocha has.

The introduction talks of “heterogenous sex” when heterosexual sex is intended and HIV/AIDS where HIV is Human immunodeficiency virus but referred to as “Human Imuno Deficiency Syndrome Virus” infections/AIDS, whilst hepatitis is spelt as “haptetis”.

The syndrome is related to AIDS and it quite different from HIV, which is different from other sexually transmitted infections of which there are viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites and protozoa. The learned doctor goes on about bacteria as if his knowledge is stunted.

Bad Medical School

Then he veers into the causes of homosexuality with unfounded and fantastic claims that reads like mumbo-jumbo of quack snake-oil merchants that stand at street corners fleecing the gullible with confidence tricks.

It begs the question what aspect of medical school he missed that his blinding ignorance reinforced by our obsequiousness to lettered idiots allows him to profess knowledge where he evidently has none.

As human knowledge has progressed in technology, medicine and other elements of human endeavour, we have changed and adapted to use the knowledge to advance humanity.

It is not a mental disorder

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder and this new knowledge has progressively been accepted by other mental health organisations until it was fully declassified by the World Health Organisation in 1990.

It would then seem, if a doctor were to overturn this body of expert medical knowledge and study, he might well be vying for the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine after having had his thinking and hypotheses peer reviewed by the best in the field or else he is just plain ignorant.

We can have all sorts of moral debates on the issue of sexuality but I would contend that if the Wright Brothers who invented flying were to see the aircraft we put in the air today, they would not be remiss in considering the art and science of flying today as witchcraft.

An irresponsible doctor

The biggest danger posed by Dr. Nwokocha’s assertions is in offering uneasy comfort to heterosexuals in Nigeria who are most affected by HIV/AIDS and consequently everyone else by suggesting homosexuals and so-called homosexual behaviour are the vectors for sexually transmitted infections.

That is at first utterly irresponsible and reckless but you are left to wonder why those with the means flee Nigeria for medical treatment when charlatans like Dr. Nwokocha are allowed to touch living things where rats will find better succour in the gutter than visit his medical centre for cheese.

It goes without saying that people might find certain sexual conduct abhorrent but for supposedly educated people to use that platform to foist reprehensible views that have no academic quality portraying some moral justification to promote stigmatisation and persecution is beneath contempt.

Reconsidering World AIDS Day

I am saddened that the Nigerian Vanguard did not rise to any standard of responsible and educative journalism and to have given the likes of Dr. Nwokocha a World AIDS Day forum to postulate atrocious fallacy in the face of more pressing HIV/AIDS issues in Nigeria just shows how we embrace ignorance over useful knowledge and what we need to see better for ourselves and those around us.

This World AIDS Day should have us reflect and give no space to stigma, prejudice and negative propaganda, there are people out there, suffering and dying, when you begin to single out people and groups, how long will be before you get to the woman, the child, the neighbour, the relation, the family and finally ourselves?

Let us do the needful and the rightful, get tested and support every initiative to understand and appreciate how humanity great and small is affected by HIV/AIDS – Dr. Nwokocha’s kind of thinking has no place in this better world.

World AIDS Day 2010

Where is the issue?

You sometimes wonder HIV/AIDS is a distant event, a big news story somewhere on some subcontinent where the issue of BigPharma and access to affordable drugs allows for celebrities to find causes.

People live with HIV and people live with AIDS and many have been brought back from the brink of death by reason of treatments that make medicine almost a miraculous act.

The many more who have been fortunate not be touched by this disease are indeed fortunate, I have seen friends go so suddenly when I thought they were doing fine.

Amazing drugs

The drugs do help and there are improvements to the drug regimes that help prevent recidivism the drugs are combined into single pills taken just once a day rather than 5 or more pills taken at different intervals of the day.

In the West there are lots of resources available for treatment, it is no more the death sentence it once was but it is a sentence nevertheless and some find it exotic enough to want to be infected – the logic escapes me.

It is all fine and well that World AIDS Day 2010 has the theme for protecting yourself and others from HIV and that is meaningful message to those who are not infected. Those who are infected have to deal with the issues, the situation and the prejudices that make for the decision to stand out and be counted.

Do you know someone living with HIV/AIDS and is it time for you to understand what they might be going through?

December the first - for those who live with it

A story to tell

He was sent home to spend the last of his days from France. One cannot remember what he was imprisoned for, but when they found out he had it he was offered compassionate leave.

As time seemed to run out, he dedicated himself to writing about his life, his loves and what would have been – as a computer buff, one could see that his job was made the more complicated by an unintuitive word processor called Microsoft Word 1.0.

He did tell his tale, just before he slipped into the memory of those who once knew him – today brings that back to mind.

An opera beyond a soap opera

The most jovial and effervescent man he was, the quintessential opera queen, he had well over 5,000 classical and operatic albums and had written an encyclopaedia of opera.

He had enough insight to suggest that Maria Callas was not so much of what people made her out to be.

When we gathered for his 38^th, one was oblivious of the fact that we were not to celebrate another because one opened the pages of the Evening Standard to read of an interview he had given just a week before he slipped in the memory of those who once knew him – today brings that back to mind.

No eclipse darkened the day

In the week that Europe saw the total eclipse, was there a chance that love might blossom or not? Infatuation enveloped the minds of the two who thought there was a future but neither was aware of how long it might be.

Documentaries of one who suffered like it was the last night and that happened 4 times over many years – 22 years on, it looked like a sentence then but the no-hopers of yesteryears are living prosperously today – they have not slipped into memory, rather their fellowship is renewed in friendship and assurance that a future always exists for those who seek to live and love life.

The news of hope

And so the news came as years now add up to 6 and much more, and what was expected was not what was observed; anger, denial, shame, fear, frustration, guilt, despair, sadness, depression, confusion and dejection gave way to one critical emotion required on hearing such news – Hope.

Nurse was empathetic beyond measure as he cried tears and the hearer of the news consoled him – a time has come when if you heard the news, it was no more a personal death sentence but an opportunity to make life worth living.

They go on to do great things and no one is any wiser about the great burden they carry as they make light of that to concentrate on doing even greater things.

They will live

Then around the world, the urgency to act is caught up in the politics of complacency, but thankfully, we would no more be prescribed beetroot but tablets that help mother give child life, that helps child avoid the orphanage and lets the people continue to be productive members of society.

We shall not be identified by labels of separation and pariah, but live to celebrate anniversary after anniversary of those who live with a sentence but not one of death.

We shall see more days

Today is the twentieth, it would not be long till the fortieth – those who have slipped into memory encourage us to be heroes and those that remain teach us to understand our humanity even more so.

We shall not suffer in silence, our footprints shall be etched in the tablets of reckoning even though the sands of time blow over them – when the tablets are recovered, they who decipher the code of ages past would learn that they did not all perish – hope kept them alive and they were alive with hope.

Today is a day to celebrate hope. Hope, believe and live.