Living with AIDS: discrimination hurts

But while it’s one thing to plot strategies to deal with the economic impact of the AIDS epidemic, it’s quite another to experience the harsh reality of living with the disease. Thirty-three year old Herman Bain was diagnosed with HIV two years ago. Today, he is still coping with the discrimination from potential employers, and even his own family.

Herman Bain, HIV. Positive

“After they know then they treated me differently. Sometimes, even when I go into places and I would ask somebody for a cup of water and I tell them that I’m HIV positive, they would be like you could take the cup. Even my own uncle does that to me. My own sister discriminates against me, so I kinda deal with it. It doesn’t matter, you don’t have to be HIV positive to be discriminated, so I just live with it.”

Janelle Chanona

“What’s the message you want to tell business people and the public in general about what you’re going through?”

Herman Bain

“that’s it’s okay to accept people living with HIV and AIDS. We’re all human beings, we’re not different just because of a disease. We need help, we need love. And if you show someone living with HIV compassion and love, they will want to do something better for themselves and the community. But if you treat them like nothing, they might treat other people, they might even infect other people. They will be mad, they will act madly and things. So if we treat people with love, I think people will start to show love, start to even talk about this disease and thing right.”