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President Heiberg gives a food parcel on behalf of the Zimbabwe Red Cross to a family now headed by the eldest brother since the loss of their parents to AIDS.
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"If you yourself are caring for someone who is HIV positive and you yourself are HIV positive, then we will be able to understand earch other better."
Josephine Chiturumani, volunteer living with HIV/AIDS
Zimbabwe Red Cross Society.



"The reason I tell people I am infected is because I have the same feelings as people who are not infected. I have the strength, the capacity and the intelligence to contribute to society."
Patinya Noyphon, volunteer living with HIV/AIDS
The Thai Red Cross Society



"If you are open, you stop living in fear of being an outcast because of HIV infection. It gives a feeling of empowerment knowing you are making a positive impact for yourself and others."
David Mukasa, Volunteer living with HIV/AIDS
The Uganda Red Cross Society.


"Though we aren't losing our volunteers at the rate that the African Societies are losing theirs, or in Societies in other countries, we have an obligation to understand their need and to help them."
David Brooks Arnold, living with HIV/AIDS
Director of International Relations
American Red Cross.






We are all living with HIV/AIDS
25 June 2001
By Dr. Astrid Heiberg


One version of the Spartacus legend has it that the Romans offered to spare the lives of his followers if the leader of the slave revolt would identify himself. “I am Spartacus,” he declared, which triggered a chorus of such claims from his comrades, in a rare display of solidarity with someone who had the courage to speak out while facing certain death.

So it should be at the UN special session on HIV/AIDS in New York from June 25 to June 27. If we all do not admit to living with the virus in a deep and personal way then the development of vaccines, access to treatment, and further investment in prevention programmes will all be rendered ineffective.

For it is now clear – twenty years after the virus was first identified - that the stigma and discrimination associated with people living with HIV/AIDS is itself one of the major obstacles to preventing the spread of the virus.

Stigma and discrimination force the virus, and those who carry it, underground, and are just as strong a disincentive to testing as the absence of affordable treatment for the vast majority of those infected. These are powerful considerations in understanding why the majority of the 36 million people who are HIV positive don’t know it as yet.

HIV/AIDS exploits human behaviour, ignorance, poverty, illiteracy and can grow fat enough on existing levels of discrimination within our society, without feeding further on the stigma which affects all those struggling with the effects of the virus either directly on themselves or on their loved ones.

No country, culture or institution is immune to HIV as we have sadly learned to our own cost. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, for example, is trying to become a better home for our own staff and volunteers who are living with the virus. Their actual numbers are estimated at 200,000 or more but the reality is that all of us in the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement – some 100 million members and volunteers - are living alongside, and with, the virus and that it is a central priority for the International Federation as we face into the 21st century.

The International Federation has done much soul searching and hard analysis on the adequacy of its response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. This culminated in a commitment late last year from 53 Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies throughout Africa to scale up massively their response to the unprecedented disaster facing them. They committed to mobilise two million volunteers against the virus over the next ten years in the fields of advocacy, prevention, care and mitigation. The situation in Asia leaves us with little time to act if we are to avoid an African-style tragedy in some of the world’s largest population groups.

We are working on a campaign to extend the protection of the Red Cross and Red Crescent to all those who are victims of the stigma and discrimination associated with HIV/AIDS. We are profoundly grateful to them for joining our ranks and bringing us their lessons about the capacity of the human being to rise above the indignities of the disease itself in an often uncaring world.

The International Federation sees it as vitally important that we forge close links with governments as well as other groups in civil society on this issue particularly with GNP+, the Global Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS, who are leading the way in making the world a better place for people who are HIV positive. Our two networks will combine forces to bring our message to governments during the UN Special Session where the most important members of our delegations will be volunteers from around the world.

Apart from their courage, the volunteers with us in New York have in common not only the fact that they are HIV positive themselves, but that they all work pro-actively to build the capacity of people living with HIV/AIDS and to change behaviour in order to prevent the spread of the epidemic.

They are inspiring people. We hope that their humanity, and the humanity of all people living with HIV/AIDS, will be recognised at the Special Session and in this way the world will take another small step towards eliminating the stigma and discrimination associated with the virus.