Opinion Pieces

"I tested positive seven years ago and up to date no member from my immediate family knows about and I am not ready to disclose to them soon. I just vowed to live with my condition in silence rather than taking the risk of looking for worse by revealing my status. I saw what my aunt went through before she passed on and I can't imagine going through the same hell." This is what John, a barber in an estate within Nairobi, told me as he shaved me. We came to be friends after I went to his shop

I’ve spent the last 1.5 years delivering training on HIV and related topics in Scotland. The audience has been diverse – it’s included nurses, GP’s, infant feeding advisors, midwives, therapists, social workers, addictions and criminal justice workers, dieticians and occupational therapists, psychologists, early childcare workers, people who work with vulnerable adults, students and people in a wide variety of other roles! During this period I’ve delivered training for nearly 550 peo

"Mr. Kimboi or whoever you call yourself, I demand some respect. I have human dignity as you do and deserve to be treated with decency. I do what I do because I am passionate of, this is my source of livelihood as well as my profession. And by the way you need to apologize if you are still interested in getting what you came for!" Janet fumed! I had no option but to be submissive and apologize though I also had to correct her: I am not Kimboi but Kemboi. She felt offended when I innocently re

Marsha P. Johnson, in a photo from the new documentary. Victoria Cruz, a dogged crime-victim advocate in New York City, has taken on one last case before retirement. She wants to solve the mysterious 1992 death of Marsha P. Johnson — a trans woman like Cruz herself — who’s body was pulled from the Hudson river after disappearing the evening before. The cause of death had been ruled a suicide, but that doesn’t wash with Marsha’s friends or with much of the LGBT population of New Yor

I’ve not written anything for a while, or more accurately I have written a lot and left the contents of my ramblings in the draft vaults of WordPress.com. So what’s going on in my life? Well I’ve been dating someone since May and it’s going well enough for us to venture on our first trip away this weekend. Work is good and over the summer I was so proud to see our Can’t Pass It On campaign launch as well as tick off a number of other projects I’ve been working on this year. M

How do you know if someone has HIV? You don't. A lot of people who have HIV don't know that they have it. They don't have the slightest idea that they are already carrying it and still continue to engage in risky behaviors. That is why it is important to seek early testing and treatment to diminish harmful effects the virus can cause. If it stays in the body for a long time without medication, the virus can replicate into thousands of copies and can entirely destroy the immune system. Once t

This article by Lewis Oakley previously appeared at Pink News, here Hey lads, Today is an important day and I wanted to send you a message. As Twitter and some decent news sites erupt in a blue, pink and purple celebration of Bi Visibility, I know you can’t show your support for fear someone may find out. Mates that would never accept bisexuality and insist you must be a gay man now. A girlfriend that will be embarrassed and worried your relationship will be seen as a joke by everyone. Fa

It was announced last week that the AIDS Bureau - not its official title but the one most commonly used - has a new head. It’s Joanne Lush. This is good news. Joanne steps up to the position previously held by Frank MvGee, who recently retired. (We reported on that here.) Joanne is no stranger to much of this work, having worked at the Bureau since 2003. Prior to that she was the Executive Director of what was then called Peterborough AIDS Resource Network (PARN). I was chair of PARN’s b

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."  -- George Bernard Shaw When I was young, in my 20s, we had no internet or Skype. We had party lines and dial phones or those fancy new push button phones that were all the rage. We didn't have texting or sexting, or Scruff or Grindr, or phones that were used solely for the purpose of taking self-absorbed portraits of our dinners or our faces with duck lips. No, we had much more... We actually talked to

As an HIV-positive man who happens to be wheelchair bound, I have been told recently a lot by friends that they are praying for me. Those who are aware of the fact that I am a non believer, immediately follow their kind gesture with an apology like, “I know you are an atheist but...” Atheism is not a religion and I call myself a non believer of the prejudicial, judgmental, bigoted idea of “God”. I have encountered since I was a child, many situations and postures, many of them conf

As much as you think of going on a 'revenge mission', bear in your mind that your target might be also undertaking a similar mission. Be careful not to commit suicide! Some people become so bitter when they turn out to be HIV positive, they feel that they should not die alone. Such thoughts are so evil and should be highly condemned. In fact, tough laws should be formulated to prosecute these people with ill minds. I get surprised when I hear someone say, “HIV is not meant for trees but peo

Risky business. Risk taker. High risk. That’s not how people want to be seen when it comes to HIV. In the epidemic, the word “risk” is associated with the notion of “doing something wrong.” So using the words “at risk” becomes risky in itself. It runs the risk of turning people off, and away from prevention messages. People may not avail themselves of condoms or PrEP (the HIV prevention pill) if they don’t identify with risk. If they don’t identify with HIV ris

It may be long distance but I’ve met someone I feel so much closer to than some of the people around me. They say there is someone out there for everyone. And they say love will find you when you least expect it. The only problem with that rhetoric is, they say it like the person is right down the street from me or close by. At last count, and according to what I’ve found online, there are more than 7.5 billion humans on the planet, so where is mine and what in the hell am I doing wrong?

Women represent 50% of the population of people living with HIV globally, yet there has been little research or sharing of information about who heterosexual woman acquire the HIV virus from. There is focus on stressors attributing to women living with HIV, including intimate partner violence, gender inequality, unequal power dynamics within relationships, race, ethnicity, poverty, education and various social disparities. Yet, there is little information about men as active participants other

“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times: said Charles Dickens. “It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity." That was about Paris in 1869. It could have been written about Canada in 2017 and the state of our response to HIV. The best of times? Many feel we are approaching the end of the epidemic with 2030 set as the target date by UNAIDS. We are closing in on 90-90-90 targets which means more people li