AIDS / The impact of HIV from Congo to Canada
by Shawn Syms for Xtra.ca
"In the early days of the epidemic in North America, when only gay men and heroin addicts had HIV it was easy to shun people with the disease: these were marginalized groups, easily isolated."
-Stephanie Nolen in 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa
Zackie Achmat went from fighting apartheid to fighting for his life. After he 
tested positive the gay activist formed the Treatment Action Group in 1998 to demand affordable medication for three million people living with HIV in his country. Achmat announced he would "not take expensive treatment until all ordinary South Africans can get it on the public health system." He became a national hero.
Achmat is profiled in Stephanie Nolen's 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa. Nolen, who identifies as queer, is the Globe and Mail's Africa correspondent. She's written about AIDS since 2003. Her choice of 28 stories is symbolic, representing the estimated millions of Africans living with HIV.
A moving and intelligent book, 28's great strength is a freedom from moralism. In her introduction Nolen gives the most straightforward description I've read of how HIV operates in the body, how it's believed to have first manifested among humans and the trajectory of the virus across the continent and around the world.
Blaming others is a universal aspect of the response to HIV. In North America the onset of the epidemic among queers and IV drug users was interpreted as a morality play. Many of Nolen's interviewees express disbelief they could be touched by that "white man's disease," an export from America, which, at worst, was thought to affect prostitutes and the poor.
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