HIV Stigma: Its True State Around the World 

Episode 1 of HIV Heroes takes us from Northern California to South Africa to Thailand. 

We meet Robert Quon, a physician at California’s Permanente Medical Group, who has done 23 of the last 24 AIDS/LifeCycle bike rides from San Francisco to Los Angeles — a 545-mile journey which raises awareness and funds for HIV care, treatment, and prevention. He describes the “ride community as the world as it is supposed to be” with so much to teach the world about resilience, strength, and loss — especially during COVID. In the global HIV response, Quon urges “every single one of us has a part to play.”

In South Africa, nurse Mandisa Nikita Dukashe didn’t let COVID-19 get in the way when she mobilized leaders to form the U=U Africa Coalition in 2020. Now as South Africa’s unofficial spokesperson for U=U, or Undetectable = Untransmittable, she says her work is to show people that “HIV is not a sin.” Dukashe imagines that one day we all will be “living in (an HIV) stigma-free society.”

Dr. Praphan Phanuphak, who diagnosed Thailand’s first three cases of HIV in 1985, describes the stigma experienced by both HIV patients and doctors in Thailand. The patient “was expelled from work and expelled from the apartment that he lived” and doctors were afraid they’d be accused of encouraging “people with HIV to have unsafe sex.” He recognizes, “Nowadays, stigma and discrimination is somewhat improved but still (prevalent) in Thailand.”

Learn more about their stories and others at HIVPlusMag.com/HIVHeroes.