Making the Invisible, Visible

For the past couple of weeks we have been studying about Human Rights. The first week was an intro to Human Rights, what they are, and why it's important. We shifted around some work centers. We then identified some topics and went through a process called consensus building, in the goal of coming to a conclusion of a topic we would be focusing deeply on for the next few weeks. Our class landed on the topic of HIV, and more particularly the discrimination that goes along with it. In the beginning, I knew only a few basic facts about HIV/AIDS. I really didn't understand why people with HIV would carry around a stigma, why others would discriminate them, and why it's so embarrassing to have it - after all, it's a disease, and anyone can catch diseases. During the research, I found out a lot more about HIV - how it can be passed on, how it affects people, why there's discrimination, who it affects, what's being done to improve it, and what should be done. The number of people that's been affected and that are still suffering from this disease is humongous in Malaysia and many other countries, and most of these people are uneducated about the disease that they carry around in their bodies. It's a disease that not a lot of people talk about, and therefore not a lot of people know about it. I'm a lot more lucky in terms of education, and yet I hardly know much about this - then what about the people who can't afford education? HIV/AIDS is a widely spread epidemic and is still spreading rapidly. It's growing more and more dangerous as more people are infected, and that's why it's such an important topic to focus on. Since it's a disease that is embarrassing to talk about, what people need to know about this deadly disease doesn't get to them, making the epidemic spread so rapidly, but invisibly. The disease could be living in a person's body for 10 - 15 years with no symptoms before he or she realizes that they are infected - shocking. During that time, the person could spread the disease to tens of people, without even knowing it. This makes the disease very, very dangerous, and to solve this problem and educate people about it isn't easy. People don't seem to accept the information they are given, and they don't want to believe it nor talk about it, making the job harder. But there is a way, though it might be the longer, tougher, and slower way, but it will help, and that is what we are working towards to achieve in this topic - to educate and raise awareness, if only a few people, about this deadly epidemic.