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White people have HIV, too.

 

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2 February 2007

When I ran across a story talking about the National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (NBHAAD) I was stunned and a little outraged. Why is it necessary to have NBHAAD? Do black people feel they should mobilise along racial lines to fight against HIV and AIDS?

It was with relief that I continued to read and realised that this was an article from the USA and South Africa has, thankfully, not decided to introduce HIV and AIDS apartheid. (The Americans’ need to have “Black” everything is still perplexing, however, but we won’t get side-tracked.)

Though relieved, this initiative made me realise that I have some issues with HIV and AIDS awareness adverts and campaigns in South Africa. For example, when HIV entered society, especially in the USA, people were convinced it was only a male homosexual disease (which granted, it largely was, when it first started to spread). But I feel a new and popular stereotype has been born, in no small part thanks to the media – the idea that HIV is now a “black people’s disease”. Most of the adverts I see in South African newspapers and on billboards for example, depict black people suffering from HIV and AIDS. Even in the adverts where teenagers are being cautioned against unsafe sex or being urged to abstain, black models are most frequently used.

Also, the stories of people who are suffering from the disease that snatch the media’s attention are those of black people. Surely there are members of other races which are living with HIV and AIDS, why are we not reading about their stories? In a democratic country, even the minority should be represented.

Yes, the other races are participating in the fight against HIV and AIDS but it looks to me like they are mostly playing the “good Samaritan” role. They establish shelters for the AIDS orphans and think up brilliant ideas to raise awareness for what is increasingly looking like “a black person’s disease”.

One hour of web browsing failed to reveal adequate information on the infection ratio of the different races. The Department of Health had statistics from the year 2000 and nothing more recent.

An HIV and AIDS research site, JournAIDS, is one site where such information is available. In 2002 the HRSC released the Nelson Mandela / HSRC Study of HIV/AIDS: South African National HIV Prevalence, Behavioural Risks and Mass Media, Household survey 2002. In 2005 they did another study, the South African National HIV Prevalence Incidence Behaviour and Communication Survey, 2005. The studies revealed the following prevalence statistics by race:

HIV prevalence by race in SA (ages two years and older)	2002 %	2005 %
Total	11.4	10.8
African	12.9	13.3%
White	6.2	0.6
Coloured	6.1	1.9
Indian	1.6	1.6

Source: JournAIDS.

Therefore, statistically, you are more likely to contract HIV if you are black than you are if you are white. But that doesn’t mean that black people should be painted as the only faces of HIV. Whenever an international celebrity visits South Africa or another country in Africa they will pick up an AIDS orphan and without fail the child is always black. This must stop. Also evident from these statistics is the fact that between 2002 and 2005 HIV prevalence in black people increased while that of other races either decreased or stayed the same which lends rather worrying credence to the “black people’s disease” theory.

I was rather pleased when a white doctor raised the question of white people and their refusal to accept the reality of HIV and AIDS in their lives. In a blog titled, “White people don’t get HIV. Apparently” the blogger, “SADoc”, speaks of white people not using condoms because their partners “look clean… and not sick at all”. She says:

“Why do white people think they can SEE a person who is infected? If a person ‘looks clean’ – it’s ok to [have sex with] them without using a condom? Argh. And it is not about education… I have medical friends (who know the most about the disease and its implications) – yet STILL sleep around without a condom or a recent negative HIV test.”

A reply to this blog completely proves her point.

“Sure the implications are HIV are horrendous. This is a given. But to assume that the risk faced by white people in LSM 6 – 8 is the same as the risk faced by black LSM 1 – 5 is spurious. For the last 15 years I have made my living selling life insurance to suburban / serial monogamous white and Indian people that have advanced in age, as I too have aged. Purchasing life insurance requires a mandatory HIV test. There simply is no getting out of it. And in 15 years, thousands and thousands of clients, friends, old school mates, varsity buds, work mates, etc, NOT ONE has turned up positive! Go figure! No one is denying the consequences, or how it will bugger up one’s life… but this disease simply does not feature on the radar within ENTIRE sections of the SA population. And that is a fact.

As a parent of two teenage children, my HIV/AIDS message to them is…

A B C D
1. Abstain while / where you can
2. Be faithful
3. Condomise
4. Demographic – Keep to white upper class mates”

How ridiculous! I do not think that the other races in this country think they are immune to the disease. In fact they know they are not because beyond their silence they are also being devastated by the pandemic and taking anti-retroviral medicine, fighting for their lives just like black people. The media’s focus on the strife of black people against the pandemic is contributing greatly to perpetuating the myth that HIV and AIDS is a black person’s disease. It also means that other racial groups will never be comfortable in disclosing their HIV status because, “they should not have it”. A person wouldn’t like to have foot and mouth disease because it is a pigs’ disease. HIV and AIDS has many faces, the media must show them all. – Akhona Cira

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