Boris Konakov: "I live with HIV"

“The last six months, about once every one and a half months, at 7.30 in the morning, a taxi comes for me and takes me for the distant land, to the distant kingdom, into the thirty state, fenced with a concrete wall of silence. We enter the territory and approach the gray eight -story building. The car stops, I pay, I go to theist, go to the entrance, go for the departure, go for the way. I call for the seventh, I rise, I open the door in front of me, and for the next one anda half to two hours I have no longer a name.

"The intake of doctors begins at eight in the morning, I usually come ten minutes before the start, and there are already three or four awaiting in front of me - men or women, young or elderly, pregnant women or pensioners. Anonymity in the form of an individual number to people living with HIV, they are formed at the first reception. The silence system is formed by public opinion: HIV and AIDS are shameful diagnoses of representatives of" risk groups ".

Stereotypes and stigma formed by people who consider themselves to be the "ordinary" majority - heterosexuals that do not suffer from drug addiction that are not criminal and not used by sex services, turn against them. Finding an HIV-status, they are afraid of publicity, as a result of which they can be considered prisoners, sex workers, drug users or homosexuals (in medical terminology-men with sex with men). For the same, in turn, the assignment of status means a double stigma - people are not without a reason that they are already a shaky socialization will finally collapse and they will be buried under the wreckage, on which the "usual" majority will dance.

As soon as a little more than a year ago, the authorities stated that the HIV epidemic in Russia took on a generalized nature, that is, went beyond the “risk groups”, which means she began to threaten the “ordinary majority”, official and media persons began to pay more attention to the issue of the Destigmatization of people living with HIV, not to mention the fact that the practice of silence and anonymity became one of the reasons for the generalization of epidemia. And it continues to function, and the number of new cases of HIV is to grow. ”

"A sense of humiliation is worse than a prison conclusion, and the fear of social death is even more than physical, forces many people to depersonalize themselves and others, fueling the destructive power of silence. Silence sets traps for those who closed in their safe world, naively believing that" life will twist and twist the wheel with someone, but it does not seem strange to take a mortgage for 30 years and for 30 years and for 30 years. To overpay millions, but twice a year to test the HIV or put on a condom is imagined by something optional.

At the same time, in one of the risk groups, being well aware of the methods of transmitting infection, I did not pay attention to volunteers in clubs who offered contraceptives and passing the express testing, and the breaks between the IFA analysis were indecently a huge time. Forging myself for the confidence in the half -familiar partner and himself for ignorance of myself, I went to look for the social prerequisites for what happened. The road led to silence.

Stigma will not disappear until we will be nameless numbers. If we say nothing before the partner, we will never know if a person will understand us or not. If we do not show our example that HIV is not scary, then how do the rest understand that our difference from them is actually not a difference? No one, except us, will open our closet in which an evil woman is hiding. Because we are already adults. Silence kills us. HIV-positive people in Russia are prescribed drugs of antiretroviral therapy, not included in the Ministry of Health in the list of vital, when their immunity falls to a critical mark. Who is interested in the life of some N19511 there? He will be crossed out, and another will immediately stand in this place.

But it’s not so easy to delete Katya, Petya, Masha, Vanya, who, according to official figures, almost a million, in unofficial ones - one and a half. Inaccuracy is the result of silence to which life is sacrificed. Nameless numbers cannot be treated without registration in large cities. But Luda, Vova, Oleg, Sveta, maybe they want to live in different places of a large and beautiful country, because they love it, respect and appreciate it, hoping to get the same in response, regardless of their HIV status. It is a shame not to hurt HIV, but to stigmatize it. Silence is not a medicine. I am against silence. I am Boris Konakov, journalist. I live with HIV. "