The Manila Times: Carla Bruni-Sarkozy HIV/AIDS Ambassador

In her World AIDS Day 2009 speech, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, first lady of France and ambassador for the Global Fund to Fight Malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS reaffirmed her commitment to support the fight against HIV/AIDS.

To quote Bruni-Sarzoky, “I am not a doctor, a researcher, or a politician. I am a woman moved by the injustice of a world where the knowledge and medications exist to prevent transmission of HIV and deaths from AIDS, and yet millions of people still become infected and die.”

In this role of ambassador for the Global Fund, Bruni-Sarkozy emphasizes the need to eliminate mother to child transmission of HIV, which is highly prevalent in developing countries but is already practically nonexistent in first world countries like the US and Europe.

Bruni-Sarkozy has traveled to Burkina Faso and South Africa where she met HIV positive mothers and their babies, talked to them and comforted them.

The hands-on approach Bruni-Sarkozy has taken in support of the cause has caught the attention of many of those who applaud her dedication and her sincerity.

Bruni-Sarkozy’s brother, Virginio, died in 2006 from an AIDS-related illness and she has disclosed that this is one major reason why HIV/AIDS is a very personal matter to her.

Bruni-Sarkozy’s experience is very similar to the motivations for some of the participants of the World AIDS Day 2009 Campaign called, “Dare to Bare” where ordinary everyday people or “people like you and me” were photographed wearing nothing but the AIDS ribbon and boldly declared their support for the cause.
All of the advocates shared their personal stories as to why HIV/AIDS is “real” to them and why it is time to get over the shame and self-righteous prudishness/quasi-religious stance.

One such story is that of AJ’s, a human rights activist who recently lost his friend to AIDS. AJ takes about how this experience moved him and why he made a decision to pose for the cameras for the first time—and in the nude, at that—in support of a cause that has now become personal to him.

“When I came back to Manila after a year overseas, the last thing I expected was to receive an e-mail requesting financial assistance to defray my friend, Vin’s, hospital expenses. I did not even know Vin was sick or that he was in the hospital.

“I was surprised, but not alarmed. Vin was healthy, a tri-athlete. I didn’t think it was anything serious. And I didn’t ask. Vin was my friend in need. I didn’t need to know all the details in order to help.”
The times that I tried to visit Vin in the hospital, I was politely advised by family members that Vin was not ready to receive visitors.

“Once when talking to another friend, she said, ‘It’s hard with AIDS’—pertaining to Vin’s physical pain. I was shocked but tried not to show it. Until then, I had no idea what Vin was sick of.”

It was then that I began piecing things together. Vin’s sibling confirmed that he was often very weak and did not want friends to see him that way.

When Vin passed away a few months after, many questions went through my mind: When did he know he was positive? Were there times when he needed someone to talk to? When was the last time that I saw him and what did we talk about? Did I get to tell him everything I should have said? Because now, I can’t.

Vin was the first person with HIV/AIDS I knew who has passed on. It has made HIV/AIDS more real to me.

I have never before posed publicly for the cameras, but I am doing this in memory of a dear friend’s life that was well-lived.”

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Consider this:

According to a USAID report on the HIV/AIDS profile of the Philippines made in September 2008, one of the factors that put our country vulnerable to a broader HIV/AIDS epidemic is “the persistence of stigma and discrimination results in the invisibility of living with HIV/AIDS [PLWHA].” More distressing is the USAID’s finding that: “approximately two thirds of young women lack comprehensive knowledge on HIV transmission, and 90 percent of the population of reproductive age believe you can contract HIV by sharing a meal with someone.”
Read more about HIV/AIDS by visiting

www.usaid.gov/pop_health/aids/Countries/ane/philippines.html and

http://unaids.blogspot.com/2009/03/unaids-philippines.html

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