Reykjavík Grapevine - 11.09.2009, Page 6

There are 158 HIV positive men and
women and 23 persons diagnosed
with AIDS living in Iceland right
now. Thirty-seven people in Iceland
have died of the virus. HIV and AIDS
have inflicted one person for every
1,466 on this small island and touched
exponentially more through family
ties, friendships and acquaintances.
Still, it’s difficult to imagine
receiving such a diagnosis or
learning that your loved one has. The
sensationalised face of HIV and AIDS
that has been imprinted on the public’s
common mind—a frail and fragile
homosexual male, confined to a strict
regimen of medications, sentenced to
death—is terrifying when imagined
on a sister, brother, parent, friend,
anybody.
This stereotypical image is one
that the media seeks out, for impact,
when covering the disease. It’s also an
exaggerated image that HIV Ísland is
trying to correct. “On AIDS day 2008, it
was our 20th anniversary so our project
manager and I offered interviews to
local media,” explained Gunnlaugur
I. Grétarsson, President of HIV Ísland.
“But they didn’t want interviews with
us. They wanted somebody who looks
like he has AIDS. They want somebody
gay looking and sick looking because
that’s the image of the disease. They
don’t want healthy looking straight
guys to be on TV, talking about AIDS.
It doesn’t sell.”
“All media are looking for dramatic
stories. So they try to find a small baby
girl, the only positive child in Iceland,
and try to put her in the tabloids. We
want them to tell our story as a positive
one. We want to remind people that
there is life with HIV.”
Mission stateMent
Since its establishment in December
1988, HIV Ísland has ventured not only
to change the face of HIV in Iceland but
also to support those diagnosed with
HIV and their families and to educate
the public. “At our office here we have a
social worker that comes in with whom
people can talk about their issues and
we have an open house so people can
come and sit down and meet others,”
explained Einar Þór Jónsson, project
manager of HIV Ísland.
While the services are in place to
help HIV positive people and their
families in Iceland deal with the
situation in which they have found
themselves, it sometimes takes years
for those affected by the virus to come
forward to seek help.
“People contact us after a couple of
years dealing with the disease, the first
years people tend to isolate themselves
a lot,” said Gunnlaugur. “They might
seek counselling from a social worker
but they have a really hard time getting
into support groups and coming down
to our home and meeting other HIV
positive people. They have a really hard
time getting to that point and getting
out of the HIV closet.”
taboo and prejudice
One reason that HIV positive people
find it difficult to be candid about their
condition with the general public or
even their friends and family is the
social stigma attached to the infamous
acronym. When HIV and AIDS came
to prominence in the early 80’s—
the first diagnosis in Iceland was in
1983—it was considered to be a disease
that inflicted homosexual men alone.
Now that HIV is more of an equal
opportunity attacker—12.4% became
infected through intravenous drug use,
37% through heterosexual contacts
and 45.4% through homosexual
contacts—it is still difficult for patients
and the general public to shake the
stigma and make the mental shift
toward accepting HIV as something
other than a “gay disease.”
“I think the biggest problem
was and still is the prejudice of the
person being diagnosed, the patient
himself,” said Gunnlaugur. “They
expect that society is going to judge
them so they have prejudice toward
themselves. They believe their friends
and family will look at them as a
junkie or a homosexual or a prostitute
and they categorise themselves with
these people and they feel dirty and
contagious.”
While Gunnlaugur is not HIV
positive himself, his co-worker at
HIV Ísland, Einar, is and agrees that
the taboo attached to HIV in Iceland
and elsewhere in the world makes it
sometimes difficult to open up about
the virus. “Socially it is very difficult to
be HIV positive. Most people prefer not
to tell at their work places, or the people
with whom they socialise at work or in
their free time. They don’t discuss it
publicly. Like if you are diabetic or have
some other kind of chronic disease you
would tell people ‘ok, I am diabetic and
I have to do this and that’ but people
with HIV don’t do that.”
Knowledge = prevention
A key weapon in combating the
self-depreciating feelings of those
diagnosed and the stereotypes of the
masses is education. If the public is
more knowledgeable about the virus
the thriving misconceptions about
the infected population are more
likely to be eradicated. Likewise,
increased awareness of the virus and
its transmission would do much for
containing the virus and slowing
or ceasing its spread in Iceland and
worldwide.
“In terms of prevention we have
for the last seven years had a program
running where we go to all elementary
schools in Iceland and we give
education about HIV and all types
of sexually transmitted diseases,”
explained Einar. “We’ve received
support for doing these school visits
[which aim to reach all 15 and 16 year
olds in Iceland] from the Directorate
of Health and the Health Minister
here so it’s very well prepared and well
supported.”
Access to information, like that being
provided by HIV Ísland to Iceland’s
school children and to the general
Icelandic-speaking public on hiv-island.
is (and countless other websites and
publications in all languages devoted
to disseminating information on HIV
and AIDS as a means of prevention
and awareness raising), is invaluable
and is something that has developed
slowly over the years since the official
start of the worldwide AIDS epidemic
in June, 1981. Gunnlaugur credits the
increased availability of information
on HIV as one of the most significant
changes that has taken place in the past
years, saying that it was quite difficult
to get information about the virus at the
time when his father was diagnosed in
1988.
life with hiv/aids
Developments within the medical
community since HIV and AIDS were
first encountered have made living
with the virus significantly more
manageable. “The biggest change in my
life has been discovering medications
that keep the illness stable,” said Einar.
“Medication is very different among
individuals. I, for example, take three
different medications twice a day.”
Highly active antiretroviral therapy
(HAART) medications, different from
one patient to another and varying
among stages of the virus, have
significantly improved the outlook
for HIV patients in parts of the world
where such treatments are available.
While without treatment of any kind
the prognosis of a newly infected
HIV positive person is 9 to 11 years,
HAART treatment has doubled that to
twenty years.
HIV is manageable and as more
is learned about the virus among
the medical community and more
information is dispersed among the
public, it may shake its stigma, shed
its image of fragility and death and
those diagnosed will be able to live.
Said Einar: “most HIV positive people
are capable of living a normal life now;
we just take our medicine and live our
lives.”
Article | HIV and AIDS
6
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 14 — 2009
“There is life with HIV”
Talking HIV in Iceland with HIV Iceland
CATHARINE FULTON
HÖRÐUR SVEINSSON
“They want somebody
gay looking and sick
looking because that’s
the image of the disease.
They don’t want healthy
looking straight guys to
be on TV, talking about
AIDS. It doesn’t sell.”
We felt this was by far the best issue of the summer. Megas was a
great interview, and at the time he was somewhat out of the lime-
light. I talked to him at Hótel Borg. The sun was shining, but I remem-
ber that he preferred to be photographed indoors. He said there
was too much happiness outside, or something of that nature. VG
This issue was largely dedicated to the night of the arts festival, so
we had to get an act that looked photogenic. I think it worked OK. In
this issue, I started looking into the Icelandic economy in an article
that I think was erroneously credited to Paul. What I found was not
pretty. VG
I continued looking at Iceland and its relationship with the outside
world. This attracted the attention of the Economist, and they asked
me to do a piece on the so-called Octopus, the fourteen families that
ruled Iceland but were losing control at this point. We now know
how it all went.
It was hard to illustrate, so we got to shoot a coast guard. Rather
heroic looking, I must say. Perhaps we can say we had come full
circle from the US soldier on the first one. VG
I had spent the winter at newspaper DV, where I learnt a lot, mostly
about how not to make a paper. We returned with a more read-
able layout. The cover, however, was somewhat unsatisfactory. The
diamond logo didn’t stick for obvious reasons. Sadly, Aldís had left
us, but she was replaced by the able Hörður Sveinsson. We also had
a resident Englishman in Robert Jackson. The best story was prob-
ably one on immigration, by Paul Nikolov. He later went on to fight
the good fight at parliament. VG
#4 - Issue 4 - 2003
Grapevine 101
#5 - Issue 5 - 2003
#6 - Issue 6 - 2003
#7 - Issue 1 - 2004
1. AIDS victims remembered