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Beyond and Behind the Faces of HIV and AIDs – Download the FREE ebook
05/10/2023
The Australian launch of Beyond & Behind The Faces Of HIV and AIDS took place in Melbourne as part of World AIDS Day events on, Friday, 1 December at The Peter Doherty Institute’s World AIDS Day symposium.
Beyond & Behind the Faces of HIV and AIDS features stories of ‘lived experience’ from 32 authors living with HIV from around the world, including three PWV members, Susan Paxon, Stevie Lee Walsh (PWV vice-chair) and Heather Ellis.
Compiled by Wadzanai Valerie Garwe, an HIV activist and international development specialist from Zimbabwe, Wadzi says: ‘We need a new way to combat the stigma. Whatever we are doing is not working. Maybe people need to connect to real people and real stories. All these stories tell the real and versatile lives that people with
HIV live. From life, love, death, and all things in between. Each story will touch your heart in a deep way.
These stories will help frontline workers working within HIV communities to get a better
understanding of what the trauma of being HIV positive entails to the person who gets the diagnosis. This
book is the start to creating a movement that really helps to end the stigma. End transmissions by 2030. It
is devastating that there are still children born HIV positive. That is part of the lack of knowledge. Young
people are saying they would never date a person who is HIV positive. What does that say to a young
person born with the HIV virus? You are not worthy of love?
May this book help us to normalise HIV as a chronic disease and not one in which the stigma is a form of
apartheid creating a “them and us” scenario.
We hope as the reader that this book will educate, inform and transform your life.
