The beauty of normality

It's World AIDS Day today.  Another December 1st.  With a 2018 flavour to it.

The remarkable thing for me, is just how unremarkable it has become.  And I think mainly for good reasons.

We are witnessing today what we had hoped and prayed for 10 years ago.  A world where living with HIV is a possibility.  A world where just finding out that you are HIV Positive was not a death sentence.

A few small snapshots to illustrate.

Vignette No. 1
We work at a small Christian Mission hospital in central India.   One of my colleagues is HIV positive.  Amazingly, this colleague attended a conference on HIV what we organised in 2005 in Mumbai.  Our colleague is on regular medication.  This morning when everyone else shook hands with each other, so did this precious person.  Most of our staff know about the status of our colleague and our church routinely prays for strength and health with no one batting an eyelid.   The beauty of it all is just how normal it is to work every day with a person living with HIV.  One who last year celebrated 25 years of marriage with a supportive spouse.

Vignette No. 2
A few weeks ago I met a person working in our district of Lalitpur with an agency that works to break the transmission between HIV positive mothers and their unborn children.  You do this by testing every woman who is pregnant, and then both working to get the woman on the life-saving ART meds as well as giving a special dose at birth.  I asked him how many women they had detected in the last few months in the district.  His answer shocked me.

"We found one in August" he said.  One woman.  Only one.  In the whole district.  And that too 3 months ago.  None found in the following months.  I know that maybe not all the women were tested for HIV.  But to have such a low prevalence is nothing short of a miracle.  I am so grateful.

Vignette No. 3

As a family we returned to Mumbai for the first time in 3 years last month to be part of our church Family Camp in Khandala.  We were looking forward to meeting old friends and to being spiritually refreshed.  I didn't expect to run into a miracle.  What I saw was that so many of those of those present at the camp, literally dozens of people, were there because of HIV.   Some were HIV positive themselves (including teen-agers).  Others were kids of some of our HIV friends who had passed away in years past.  Others had been caregivers.  All were enveloped into the church.  All were part and parcel of the 300 plus lovely people who were attending the family camp.  The beauty of it was that it was all so normal.  No trumpets blown, no special fanfare.  People whose lives had been ravaged in the past now part of a family.

So here we are at the end of World AIDS Day 2018.

We are so glad that God has heard so many prayers over the years.  We are so grateful for the global roll-out of ART medications.  We are so thankful for the many, many who have worked on the issue over the years.  Every bit counts.  A small shout-out is in order to our past and present colleagues at Jeevan Sahara Kendra, Shalom Delhi, Salvation Army, the CORINTH network, CANA, Judah Trust, AIDS Hope and many others!  

Does this mean that there are no challenges left to deal with regarding HIV in our end-of-2018-world?

Far from it - there are challenges galore.  Our colleagues and Shalom Delhi tell us that new people are coming in for treatment all the time.  I still get the occasional phone call from Mumbai, where the caller tells that they are HIV positive, or have a relative who is, and need help.  So much of our sexuality is still very broken.  

But there is also real hope.  And so much progress in so many ways that we have a minor luxury of being able to deal with HIV as one of a spectrum of issues that face our communities rather than a single-do-or-die struggle.

For those of you who have been part of Sheba and my long and winding pilgrimage - which included 14 years primarily focused on working with people affected by HIV - thank you!