Married blindparticipant Christophe Ramont was diagnosed with HIV this spring. On World AIDS Day, he will announce this on Instagram and via Sensoa, the Flemish expertise center for sexual health. ‘HIV is 40 years old this year, just like me.’
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‘No, I don’t have AIDS’, writes Married blind-participant Christophe Ramont on Instagram. ‘But this spring I was diagnosed with HIV+.’ With those words, Ramont immediately wants to clear up a misunderstanding, because AIDS is the end stage of the disease, in which the HIV levels rise so high that you die from it. With the treatments we know in our country today, that chance is very small.
The 40-year-old from Ghent shares his HIV status on World AIDS Day because he notices that knowledge about the diagnosis in our country is still very limited. And that weighs on the people living with HIV. ‘Is this going to kill you or not?’, he was asked after his diagnosis, Ramont states in a video for Sensoa. But the research and treatment is now well advanced. ‘Today you can no longer transmit HIV if you take your medication faithfully,’ emphasizes Ramont. ‘Undetectable is not transferable’ is therefore often heard in awareness campaigns.
No secrets
Ramont, in his own words, had no intention of ‘crawling back into the HIV closet’. Secrecy does more harm than good, he found out himself. “It took me years to come out as a gay man,” he says. He drew inspiration from an interview with cartoonist Eva Mouton. “Secrets make lonely,” she said. ‘And that’s right’, says Ramont, ‘if you have to carry secrets alone, it weighs very heavy.’
In his statement, the native of Ghent emphasizes that we should ‘just act normal’ towards people with HIV. He himself was lucky enough to be well taken care of by his friends, family and the HIV reference center in Ghent. But in recent months, he also says he has heard a lot of stories from people who don’t dare say it or who got bad reactions.
40 years old
The HIV virus was discovered 40 years ago. Around the world 33 million people have already died of AIDS. In 1996, a life-saving combination therapy broke through. With a cocktail of HIV-inhibiting drugs, the HIV virus could be suppressed so that AIDS does not occur. The death toll has dropped spectacularly in Western countries, but access to those drugs is not equally distributed around the world. African countries in particular struggle with this. In 2020, according to the UN, 680,000 people still died from AIDS. With World AIDS Day on December 1, HIV organizations draw attention to the fight against the virus.
In Belgium, 17,018 people with HIV received medical follow-up in 2020. In that year, 727 new HIV diagnoses were made, 21 percent less than the year before. Sciensano suspects that the pandemic and reduced social contacts have put a brake on the virus. In addition, today in our country Preventive medication also possible with PrEP. A daily pill makes it possible to stop contracting HIV.
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