“I went back home to Cleveland, Ohio and my own mother wouldn’t let me kiss her on the cheeks after learning that I was HIV positive,” said Howard Gilliam, who resides with a friend in Jackson, Miss. “I said, mom, you can’t catch it that way.”
Gilliam, who maintains he is not gay, is among more than 1.1 million Americans living with the Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) this holiday season. Many HIV and AIDS victims often remain secluded because they feel ostracized.
“It’s a lot of loneliness experienced. A lot of people feel isolated and sad which leads them further into depression,” he said.
However, Gilliam told The Mississippi Link that while it hurts being stigmatized, he is on a personal mission to help save others from landing in the same situation. This is how he is spending his holiday.
He said what bothers him most is the disparity in healthcare services and resources for heterosexual with HIV or AIDS. Based on his experience, most of the HIV and AIDS resources available are geared toward those of the homosexual orientation.
He was diagnosed with HIV in May 2010 after discovering that the lymph nodes behind his ears were swollen. “Someone told me about the free-testing program at the G.A. Carmichael Clinic in Canton; I went and got tested,” he said. “My CD4 (white blood cell) was 460 and my viral load was 38,000, quite high.”
Vial load refers to the level of HIV in your blood. Viral load testing looks for the number of virus particles in a milliliter of your blood. These particles are called “copies,” according to information from www.aids.gov
“My medicine, A-triple, costs $2,000 for a 30-day supply,” said Gilliam. “Because I’m a convicted felon, there are no services for me,” he said. He explained he had tried a lot of the local programs. He said he even went to New Orleans seeking help, but the situation with programs there was much the same.
West Jackson resident John Anderson, who works with the non-profit organization Mississippi Hearts Against AIDS, concurred that Mississippi has limited resources. “The process [in getting help] in Mississippi is slow and tedious at best.”
He said the healthcare disparity, in his opinion, appears to be more a class thing than a gender thing.
“If you have nothing you get nothing, said Anderson, who was a part of the West Jackson Voice of Calvary Ministry for 20 years.
Gilliam admits he cannot trace where, when or how he became infected because of his risky lifestyle. “It was because of my poor choice of behavior that led me to this,” he said. The father of one daughter said, “I was promiscuous every since I was in high school, where I graduated with honors, a 3.5 average, but I didn’t regard women as I should have.
“I went to prison for a crime I did not commit. I was accused of rape. The young lady lied. So, after I got out of prison, as a convicted felon, doors were closed for me. I’ve been living a bleak life, going from place to place and from house to house. Right out of prison, a man offered me $100 to have sex with his wife while he watched. I did it because I needed the money.” He even admits to having sex with men for money.
“My motivation in sharing my story is to save as many people as I can,” said Gilliam. If we don’t begin to educate our people, especially our young people, we’re going to become an extinct race of people. We need to go back to separating our males and females and teaching them like they did through the rights of passage in Africa, before allowing them to get together.”
He said he was talking to some 17 and 18 year olds not long ago. “I told them I was HIV positive, and they looked at me in amazement, because when a person sees me, I don’t readily look like someone who has HIV and there are thousands of us out here with no where to go and to let them know it can happen at anytime and to anybody. I don’t think a lot of them realize that they can get HIV by picking up drug addicts and having oral sex with them. They think it’s safe, but it is not, because if that female has gingivitis, pyrea, a cavity or an open womb where some reminant of blood could go through an opening they are at risk.
“I’m so straight forward, I can stand in a football stadium and talk to people about this if given the opportunity. I’m not afraid of the stigma. I even put on my facebook page that I was HIV positive,” said Gilliam. “Some men or people who are carriers of HIV won’t let people know and they keep on getting people infected. I have not had sex since my diagnosis in May.”
The stigma attached to persons with HIV or AIDS often lead to discrimination towards employment, healthcare, public transport or education. Stigma and discrimination are detrimental to people who are HIV positive or living with AIDS as they would rather choose to be silent about their conditions than to act positively about it by seeking medical treatment.
Such negative attitudes towards HIV and AIDS will also prove disadvantageous to the general public as it impedes the attempts to combat the epidemic brought by the dreaded AIDS.
The stigma attached to HIV and AIDS is the product of uninformed minds.
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