Voices of Youth

The diversity within the community of young people living with HIV means there are a range of different needs that must be met.

It is too easy for governments and NGOs to respond to the needs of PLHIV – thinking that they are also addressing YPLHIV needs. The experiences of YPLHIV are unique to their age and stages of development. The desires and dreams of a young person living with HIV will differ according to their age, their social and economic background, their sexuality, their religion, their gender and so many other factors. The HIV sector needs to recognize this broad range of factors and respond accordingly. For example, In Nepal, majority of young people contracted with HIV are drug users and it is due to the needle sharing. In developed Asia countries like Singapore, young people contracted HIV are usually due to unprotected sex. Therefore, can we adopt the same approaches to address the needs of YPLHIV in Singapore the same as YPLHIV in Nepal? I really doubt it.

I would like to share a recent personal experience. In 16th Dec 2010, a friend of mine went into a sudden coma and passed away 2 days later, it was a shock to everyone. Later, I was told by his mother that the doctor told her he had died from AIDS-related complications and had been living with HIV for more than 4 years. He did not tell anyone about his status and he was in denial for 4 years perhaps because of the traditional cultural values that he was brought up with. This belief and other influences around him had prevented him from sharing his status with anyone as I think he might face with rejection and discrimination and most importantly bring shame to his family. He was just 28 years old. I ask myself would this have been any different had we been more aware and open to the differences in the community and more proactive in fighting the stigma and discrimination that pervades society.

I strongly believe that understanding the different needs in the different countries in a young people perspective will definitely help many YPLHIV to face their status better and most importantly to promote a positive and healthy outlook for the young people community.

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This article was written by Shawn Lee, from Singapore, a member of the Global Network of People Living with HIV, Y+ Advisory Group

I’m sure that a lot of us have heard at least once about HIV; about its effects on health, about its impact on entire countries and specifically on certain populations - in most of the cases populations affected by discrimination. Some of us have not just heard about HIV, some of us are living with it.

And that is exactly what I want to talk about, some of us positive youth used to have some wrong ideas about prevention, the use of condom, or what does HIV causes to your body and health, some of us didn’t hear anything about HIV before we knew we are living with it. Ask yourself something, how useful can be YPLHIV experiences in creating prevention messages and campaigns?

If we all are supposed to learn from our (bad or good) experiences, then why are we not taking YPLHIV experiences as a lesson on what is lacking on prevention campaigns and programmes?

One of my very best friends told me that illogical questions lead to amazing answers. That’s why I try over and over again to ask myself questions that lead to answers that could help others to find the way to build good things for all of us based on my experience as a young person living with HIV.

So please ask yourself, if you were a positive young person do you think that you have all the elements that you need to live just like every other young person would? Sometimes living with HIV makes you grow up a little bit faster than others, you need to worry about things that other young persons normally don’t. It doesn’t bother me but I think all this experience could be more useful when creating new prevention strategies.

If behind every young person living with HIV is an experience that can influence other youth to prevent HIV, then why don’t we hear what positive youth want to say? Definitely we can make a difference to HIV prevention campaigns and strategies, we can even address different issues at the same time, If YPLHIV are involved on designing a campaign you will see that a HIV prevention campaign can help to prevent HIV and prevent stigma and discrimination.

Now we have evidence that YPLHIV involvement creates a difference, now it’s everybody’s responsibility to create the space where we feel safe to talk about our experiences and our ideas on how we can help other youth to be aware on HIV issues and how to prevent it, as well as how do we ensure universal access for those who are living with HIV.

If you are open enough to learn from other’s experiences, they will be open enough to learn from yours.

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(This article was written by Pablo Torres Aguilera, from Mexico, a member of the Global Network of People Living with HIV, Y+ Advisory Group)

There are millions young people living with HIV around the world. We live our lives. We are planning our futures. We have absolutely the same priorities as other young people and as generations before us. We want to achieve our goals, we want our parents to be proud of us, we want to be healthy and successful, we want to find true love and one day settle down and start a family. We are absolutely the same as you are! We just have an HIV positive status and nothing more or less. As you are, we can be useful in different areas and fields. We can be good experts and professionals. As you are we want all our dreams come true. But how can positive youth be sure about the future if we still don’t have universal access to HIV treatment?

Life saving HIV treatment was developed years ago. Last century! If positive people have access to antiretroviral therapy (ART) and receive it on time we can live long life and be in good health. But unfortunately universal access doesn’t yet exist.

When treatment is interrupted, the virus can mutate and become resistant to drugs, which makes future treatment less effective and more expensive, and risks our health further.

How can we make plans for the future if we can’t be sure people care about us today?

If a HIV positive person starts to take ART – it should be taken daily and on time till the end of his/her life. Yes, it’s hard to be on meds. Yes, it’s hard to get daily reminder that you’ve been infected. But much harder to understand is that some people prefer to ignore our needs, be blind and don’t give due attention to the current state of treatment access.

We are young! We are positive! We are a new generation!

We, young people living with HIV, are getting tired of the lack of essential medicines that determine whether we live or die. It is our right to have the highest attainable standard of health and in the case of PLHIV this means ART. It’s our future and also future of our countries! Without the necessary drugs we will die.

Around the world positive youth face interruptions of essential antiretroviral therapy everyday. Those interruptions have irreversible consequences to our health and threaten our lives.

We need people to understand it and try their best to change this situation!

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This article was written by Maria Alekseeva, of Russia, a member of the Global Network of People Living with HIV, Y+ Advisory Group