HIV Stigma, Fear Linger In UK As Infection Rates Continue To Rise

LONDON, July 2 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Rich paces the cramped, dimly-lit living room in despair, fearful of losing his friends, family and career as he struggles with the realisation that he has HIV. "Maybe I ought to put a bell around my neck, wear a sign and run around screaming 'AIDS! AIDS! AIDS!'", the gay American man shouts at his partner Saul.

One of the first plays about AIDS, "As Is" revolves around a dysfunctional young gay couple whose lives are thrown into chaos by the HIV epidemic that swept through New York in the early 1980s. The play opened at the Trafalgar Studios in London on Wednesday night to mark the 30th anniversary of its first performance in the United States.

For director Andrew Keates, who was diagnosed with HIV during a production of the play in 2013, the shame, fear and misinformation surrounding the incurable virus in "As Is" still resonate in Britain more than 30 years later. "I've met hundreds of people who have been diagnosed but are too frightened to talk about it because of the stigma that remains," Keates told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "It isn't a death sentence like it once was, but it is a social taboo."

There are about 110,000 people in Britain living with HIV, a number that has almost doubled in the last decade, and one in four have not been diagnosed and ...Read Full Article Here {uk.finance.yahoo.com}