Thursday 1 December 2011

World AIDS Day


The 1st December is World Aids Day. As it draws to a close remember, you can buy , or make a Red Ribbon, any day of the year.

I don't wish to make this a rant, but I am aware that several of you who are Followers, are what I would call 'youngsters'. I love that you follow an 'oldie' like me, but, do, please take care of yourselves.

I was young and living in London, when AIDS became a word in peoples' regular vocabulary. We were told it was a 'gay', (meaning gay men), disease. I was working for a dance company and the powers that be actually brought in a specialist from St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, which was the UK's foremost HIV hospital, to give a lecture. I didn't go...it wasn't going to affect women, was it?

I cannot sit here and type and say that I personally know of any woman, who is HIV+. But I lost a few male acquaintances to the illnesses that come with it. No one really close, but work colleagues.

For me, one of the greatest things that Diana, (POW), did was the work for the Terence Higgins Trust. She showed you couldn't catch it from touching someone. It may seem hard to believe it now, but there was shock horror when the photos came out. I later worked for someone who, apparently, took their own crockery and cutlery when they went out to a restaurant for a meal! Such was the scare-mongering that abounded, through ignorance of the unknown.

So, lassies, we may not know it all, but we're a damn sight wiser than 30 odd years ago!

Take care of yourselves, do not leave it to chance.

Wear your Ribbon with pride.
Z xx

2 comments:

  1. I work on 3 HIV drugs so our company try and do our little bit. It amazes me how much stigma there is still, especially among ethic minority groups. The big problem in the uk is the increasing infection rates among heterosexuals in their 50s who think that they don't need to use protection. Fortunately now HIV is well controlled and people can now live into old age with the infection and lead a normal life.

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  2. Well said. Sadly Aids awareness seems to have taken a back seat these days. I remember being scared senseless by those tombstone ads back in the 1980s and it certainly made me consider my behaviour very carefully.
    Mum lost a close friend, Graham, a couple of years ago, I don't think she ever got over it. x

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