I’m Positive 2021

Gregory remembers the many who were lost during the 1980s and talks about his own generation, which fought for HIV positive people hard and with dignity. Elias outlines the importance of PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) medication, and of activism in the present day. Maria talks about the role played by nursing professionals in infectious disease units. Katerina, who learned she was HIV positive 36 years ago because of the vertical transmission of the disease to her new-born child, raises the importance of broader awareness and early diagnosis. Lauretta, founder of the United African Women Organization in Greece, talks about the right everyone has to access HIV treatments. Also taking part in the discussion are Marios Lazanas, President of the Hellenic Society for the Study and Control of AIDS, and Filippos Paganis, psychologist and member of the scientific team at Orlando LGBT+.

On the occasion of World AIDS Day 2021, let’s listen to stories of acceptance and inclusion and talk about the stigma that spans generations. Together, let’s help make sure no-one has to suffer any more due to HIV, stigma, or inequality. Science has moved forward. It’s time society did too.

Gregory Vallianatos was born in Athens in 1956 and he was diagnosed with HIV in 1986. He studied political sciences, worked as a journalist and communications consultant, and has been actively involved in politics. Gregory is known for his activism, fighting for LBGTQI+ rights and for the rights of people living with HIV in Greece. In 1993, he was a founding member of the Greek branch of ACT UP (the Aids Coalition to Unleash Power), working for the protection of people with HIV/AIDS, and was later a founding member of the Greek Association of People Living with HIV – Positive Voice. Among his most important contributions, and a major success of his activism, was the passing of civil partnerships into Greek law without any discrimination based on sexual orientation, following the joint appeal he lodged at the European Court of Human Rights. He remains active, today fighting for the rights of refugees as a member of the Greek Forum of Migrants, and for the rights of the homeless as Chairman of the Board of the Greek Housing Network.

Elias Myrsinias is 27 years old and works at the Greek Association of People Living with HIV – Positive Voice. He was diagnosed with HIV in 2016. People who are receiving monitored treatment for HIV cannot pass the virus on to others – and this is the case with Ilias. He is actively fighting to extend and defend LGBTQI+ rights, and for the rights of people living with HIV. The very same day he tested positive for HIV, Elias received an outpouring of love and support from his family and friends, which gave him the strength to tackle the new state of affairs in which he found himself. He is well aware that this experience constitutes an exception, since the large majority of people living with HIV struggle to reveal their diagnosis to their family and friends, and so never receive such support. This is one of the things that spurs Ilias into talking openly about his HIV positive status, striving to fight against the stigma and prejudice faced by people living with HIV. Today, he is fighting for the deployment and application of every up-to-the-minute preventative measure science has to offer, such as PrEP, and fighting against ignorance when it comes to how the virus is transmitted.

Maria Gkika is a nurse who has dedicated her career to caring for people with HIV, equal access to healthcare, prevention initiatives, and the fight against stigma, taboos, and inequality. Like the rest of the scientific community, she is working systematically with a view to eradicating the virus. With degrees in two human sciences, specialist qualifications from the UK, and a doctorate from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, she is abundantly aware that viruses are a major threat to humankind, and constitute one of science’s great conundrums. But until such viruses are eradicated, those who have been infected must be ensured a decent quality of life. As a nurse, she has dedicated her own life to being by the sides of patients living with HIV.

Katerina Tarli was born in Athens in 1959. Thirty-six years ago, she gave birth to a baby that soon fell ill, but doctors were unable to diagnose a disease on the basis of the symptoms. After three months in hospital during which dozens of tests were performed on the baby, the doctors decided to test the mother for HIV. While displaying no symptoms herself, she tested positive for the virus at the age of 26. Her life, and the lives of her family, changed profoundly. Today, Katerina aims to get all women aware of and interested in HIV so that they take every possible precaution and know that, if caught early and treated with the latest medications, the science of today allows every person living with HIV to bring life into the world without fear of passing the virus on to their child.

Lauretta Macauley was born in Sierra Leone. From a young age, she witnessed the harsh realities of racism in a colonial society that left the local population poor and oppressed. That’s when she started fighting for her rights. In the 1980s, at the age of 18, she fled the dictatorial regime of her homeland and came to Greece. She worked, undocumented, for many years as a housekeeper, learned Greek, and was confronted with the realities of Greek bureaucracy in her attempts to live in the country as a Greek citizen. Decades later, at the age of 55, she managed to claim the Greek citizenship she so wanted. Having witnessed the situations faced by women migrants up to that point, having heard their stories and listened to their worries, to the problems they faced in their daily lives, she decided – at the end of the 1990s – to put out a call to women from Africa, and in 2005 founded the United African Women Organization. With the HIV epidemic persistently and disproportionately affecting women from Africa, she is aware of the need to address this issue and so is systematically fighting for universal access to healthcare, regardless of people’s gender, skin color or nationality – a gap in the system that has again been brought to the fore by the current pandemic.