As Indiana struggles to address the worst HIV outbreak in the state’s history, public health officials are encountering decades-old misconceptions about a virus that has a complicated relationship with stigma and shame.
The New York Times reports that the rural region of Indiana that’s been hardest hit by the current outbreak — which was fueled by intravenous drug use — has been gripped with fear about HIV, which many people don’t know much about.
Some residents told the Times they had always assumed HIV was a “homosexual disease.” Public health officials said they’re trying to reassure people that they won’t catch the virus by sharing drinks, eating at the same table, or sharing a bathroom with an HIV-positive individual. The health workers operating the state’s new needle exchange program, meanwhile, are emphasizing that distributing clean needles doesn’t encourage people to do more drugs.
Indiana’s health commissioner, Jerome Adams, recently penned a piece for the Indy Star detailing some of the most common myths about HIV he’s been hearing during the current outbreak. He reported that, in addition to worrying about contracting the virus from casual contact, people are also under the impression that HIV is the same thing as AIDS and HIV is always a death sentence.
Adams noted that many of these misconceptions have been circling since 1984, when Indiana resident Ryan White — one of the first U.S. children to be diagnosed with AIDS — fought for his right to continue attending school as concerned parents worried their children would catch the disease by sharing a drinking fountain with him.
The information gap is hardly contained to Indiana. As recently as last year, national polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 34 percent of Americans believe at least one myth about HIV transmission. Eleven percent of respondents, for instance, said that HIV can be spread by swimming in a pool with someone who’s infected, while 27 percent said you can get the virus by sharing a drinking glass.
And, more than a quarter century after Ryan White’s fight, schools in Arkansas and Pennsylvania have recently made national headlines for denying children entry to school because of concerns that they might be HIV-positive. Although the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits public schools from banning children simply based on their HIV status, the controversies in this area betray a continued reluctance to integrate HIV-positive individuals with other people who don’t have the virus.
Advocacy organizations and public health experts have continued to attempt to challenge the misinformation that swirls around HIV. Some groups have worked to document a day in the life of people with HIV to combat the stigma that often accompanies an HIV-positive status. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched a “Let’s Stop HIV Together” campaign to feature people from diverse walks of life who are all successfully managing the virus, in an effort to make HIV more visible now that it isn’t the same death sentence that it was in the 1980s.
And this month, a small Austrian men’s magazine made a dramatic statement by printing an entire issue using HIV-positive blood. The magazine is safe to touch because the virus, which can only be transmitted through direct contact with bodily fluids, dies quickly outside the body. The publishers hope it will force people to confront their long-standing assumptions about HIV.
“If you see the magazine… the first question that comes to your mind is, ‘Would I touch it? Would I take it in my hands?’ “ the co-publisher of the magazine, Julian Wiehl, told the Washington Post. “And the second question is, ‘Why would I touch it?’ or ‘Why wouldn’t I touch it?’ “
In Indiana specifically, young people are stepping up to the plate to disseminate accurate information about HIV. At Austin High School, located in the heart of the recent outbreak, rumors spread quickly through the hallways about how easy it is to catch HIV — so, in response, student leaders scrambled to assemble a special edition of their school newspaper filled with information about the reality of the virus.
“I was like, ‘Well, we’re going to have to do something about it so everyone’s aware of what’s going on around them. Because we’re living in it,” Holli Reynolds, the school’s homecoming queen and one of the students who worked on the paper, told PBS Newshour.
Reynolds also helped found a new group called “Stand Up” to help educate her peers about HIV infection and teach them how to stay healthy. The meetings are targeted at kids between second and eighth grade, but they’re also open to the public.