AIDS: He no longer wants to hide his illness. Cheer up!

Many patients hide their illness from their surroundings. In fact, mentalities have evolved, the weight of prejudice is still painful.

Today, 45 years old, Marc has been diagnosed for twenty years, but still feels the eyes of others. When he found out he was HIV-positive, he quickly realized that he would have to suffer a double sentence: discrimination and stigma.

Fear of rejection
To avoid judgments, he decides to hide the truth both from his loved ones and from his co-workers. Around him, no one knows anything about his state of health. But it only lasts a while. After a year and a half, the symptoms (fatigue, opportunistic diseases…) oblige him to break the secret. I had lost friends who had been carried off by the disease. I was very anxious to go to my turn. The evolution of treatments has allowed me to hope again, he testifies.

A manager in a marketing department, he manages to negotiate a therapeutic mid-time, but the deterioration of his immune defenses make his daily life difficult. “I felt a lot of mistrust when people learned that I was HIV positive. The disease is scary. This explains how few people dare to display it, “he says

Still a lot of ideas received
“Not many people know that when a patient is under treatment for several months and the viral load is undetectable, the virus is no longer transmissible,” he explains. The disease is always as taboo and discriminating as the fear of contamination is strongly rooted. While waiting for the society to evolve, it is waging its fight at its level to raise awareness of the people he knows and to give his testimony to those whom he meets in the context of various associations.