AsianScientist (Dec. 11, 2015) – The intersection of public health and pop culture is more striking than you think.
I wholeheartedly believe that some form of pop culture informs everything we read, watch and do. Do I know what Kim Kardashian’s newest son is called? Yes. (Saint. Saint West) Is it important? No. But, is she important? No, but she is certainly influential. Could she successfully raise awareness and fundraise for HIV/AIDS? Yes. The people behind the World AIDS Day campaign on December 1st are fully aware of the power of pop culture and celebrity in spreading awareness of disease.
In the 19th century, tuberculosis was the eminent disease in literature. In Nicholas Nickleby, Smike dies of a “dread disease.” Fantine in Les Misérables dies of a similarly named mystery illness. These works gave the victims a human story and shaped public perception of the illness.
AIDS in the spotlight
In the 20th century, an artistic and pop culture shift happened around HIV/AIDS. Elizabeth Taylor founded the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation when her actor friend Rock Hudson died of AIDS-related complications in 1985. The movie Philadelphia starring Tom Hanks is one of the first mainstream Hollywood films to deal with AIDS, homosexuality and homophobia.
In the 1980s when AIDS had become an epidemic, there was absolute hysteria over the disease, not unlike the hysteria surrounding the 2014 Ebola epidemic. The extent of the mass hysteria resulted in ridiculous notions such as an AIDS-quarantine ballot initiative in California, and in irrational Trump-esque statements such as “everyone detected with AIDS should be tattooed”.
Ryan White, a hemophiliac teenager from Indiana who contracted AIDS via contaminated blood, was banned from school. In the 1980s and 90s, HIV patients faced loss of employment, lack of stable housing and even violence.
In combating the disease, it is absolutely essential to destigmatize victims and to make the wider world understand that having HIV/AIDS made them no less of a human being. Stigma undermines prevention efforts in fighting the disease. Stigma reduces the chances that a person will use a condom, seek out HIV-testing, or care-seeking behavior upon diagnosis. Princess Diana was a pioneer in helping to combat AIDS stigma. She understood that hugging a seven-year-old AIDS patient would help to seal the gap between patient and public.
Not so far away
As a child of the nineties unaware of the complexities of the world, HIV/AIDS seemed like a disease that could never touch my life or that of my family. HIV/AIDS was only something that happened in Africa, where there was famine, drought, and children with distended bellies. HIV/AIDS was a disease that celebrities like Michael Jackson and Princess Diana dealt with, not us—the people.
However, the truth is this: we, the people, influence all factors in how this disease is approached. Stigma, discrimination, and depression are often associated with HIV/AIDS. Yet, although the global health community has certainly come a long way since the 1980s, the war against HIV/AIDS has only been, at best, half won.
To understand AIDS from a population perspective, it is vital to understand the origins of the HIV virus. While the precise origins of HIV are unclear, there is evidence that suggests that the virus originated in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1920s and was the source of pre-1960 pandemic viruses elsewhere. Rail and river transport in 1960s Congo, coupled with new sexual habits and health practices, catalyzed the HIV epidemic. The disease spread outward from Kinshasa into the mines in southeastern Congo. The virus made the crossing over to the Atlantic via a group of Haitian teachers.
WHO Director-General Margaret Chan has said that the Millennium Development Goal of reversing the HIV/AIDS epidemic has been reached ahead of the deadline, a “testament to the power of national action and international solidarity”. Deaths due to HIV/AIDS have fallen by 42 percent since 2004, and the number of new infections has fallen by 35 percent since the turn of the century. The effect of scaling up anti-retroviral therapy (ART) has been most pronounced in the WHO Africa Region, where 11 million people now receive ART.
The way forward
However, this does not mean that the WHO can now afford to rest on their laurels. Currently, 37 million people live with HIV. Those who live with HIV in 2015 are still not free of stigma, discrimination or depression. In 2014, 1.2 million people died of HIV/AIDS, and 2 million people were newly infected with HIV, out of which 220,000 were under the age of 15. Thirty years later, HIV/AIDS still affects a very large subset of the global population.
Reducing the number of new HIV infections is one of the major goals of the current AIDS campaign to end the disease. While that may be, reducing stigma ought to also be one of the major goals of the campaign. Relatively few interventions have addressed the issue of the AIDS stigma, which needs to be overcome with education and over a period of time by the zeitgeist of our age: social media, Netflix, and iPhones.
A final thought: perhaps the AIDS campaign people could call on someone like Kim Kardashian to help out?
This article is from a monthly column called Our Small World. Click here to see the other articles in this series.
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Source: Asian Scientist Magazine; Photo: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade/Flickr/CC.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.
