Published in the newspaper El Tiempo, Bogotá, Colombia
Publication Date: December 16, 1990
C hen in 1984 I thought of the need to develop an AIDS prevention program in the country , was far from imagining that Just six months later with AIDS die the first person in Colombia: a woman in Cartagena. HOWEVER for everyone, including the public sector, infection with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was a distant location. Even many saw it as a political problem that would not get to touch us. In 1985 my first friend died of AIDS, and that it was just an information about something that could become really came true. My fear and that of those close increased. Some companies that had been my sex or my friends became infected and some, the diagnosis I came too late and in a few months died. Unfortunately
found that, as in other parts of the world, the fundamental problem for many revolves around those who suffer or may suffer, not about the disease itself.
feel then that life once again takes us by surprise and urges the need to spread education much wider groups of people. With some volunteers joined the group Help and Information. We started continuous visits to places of meeting men with homosexual behavior, sex workers and health teams.
AIDS became hot topic. All the media talk about it. However it was and still is just one issue, there is no real approach to the risk of infection and even taken as a disease for another: homosexuals, drug addicts and promiscuous. This is a violent reality that specific populations that are being rejected.
Patients suffer permanent violation of their rights by health professionals, friends, relatives, mass media and even the Church refuses to accept condoms as one of the alternatives to infection and refuses to provide adequate pastoral care for the sick.
For many families, AIDS is no longer an issue. It is a hard and harsh reality. But the rejection has not changed: our environment is as real as the disease itself.
violent not only to sufferers and their relatives infection. So are those who have taken a social responsibility to address the problem. I myself was threatened with death by a right-wing group that considered that, through this important work, was enacted sexual debauchery. I was also outraged by a housewife who, after seeing a television program, I found one day on a bus and the driver asked me down for allegedly living with AIDS.
This rejection and psychosocial impact of infection are obviously the product of misinformation and lack of preparation. He has served as an excuse to further marginalize groups and marginalized people themselves always by our society.
The responsibility we several years ago still stands and the level of commitment is growing. We are confident that our work offers the possibility of a more positive life for people living with HIV or have developed the disease. It also allows changes in attitudes and practices among people who know they can and must achieve decent living standards, regardless of their condition.
But we have not only helped others to live better, but we do school for our own lives: we live as if we had the virus and this allows us more to love ourselves and others. Our life is then more and more rich, more positive, and each passing day takes on new meaning. We live and suffer, love, laugh and cry as people living with HIV or AIDS.
My work and my colleagues is not an isolated event but is a task that should be everyone since the perspectives are not reassuring. While not assume this problem as ours, we must submit to the pain of seeing our children, siblings, classmates, neighbors, friends suffering from the illness and social rejection. Everyone is exposed to the infection but we can all anticipate the risk of acquiring it.
http://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/MAM-39087 Additional information may be requested from the author. 
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