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LaLaLand · 14-09-2019, 08:51 PM

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-49675303

Quote:

Former Wales rugby captain Gareth Thomas has revealed he is HIV positive, saying he wants to "break the stigma" around the condition.

He said he wants to show how people with HIV are misrepresented as "walking around with walking sticks who are close to dying".

He has also spoken about "shame" and "fear" of keeping his condition secret.

The ex-British and Irish Lion is due to talk about his diagnosis in a BBC Wales documentary on Wednesday.

In it, he says at his lowest point in 2018 he felt like dying.

Public information campaigns in the 1980s, warning people to take precautions against Aids, have left a legacy of misunderstanding, he says.

Advances in medicine now allow people who are HIV positive to live long healthy lives. With effective treatment, the virus cannot be passed on.

Other than waking at 0600 to take a single pill every day and visiting the hospital for a blood tests every six months, the condition has little impact day-to-day life for Thomas, 45.

On the contrary, with plans to take part in an Ironman challenge on Sunday, which has involved him learning to swim, was to Thomas a way of demonstrating his physical and mental strength.

"When I first found out that I was going to have to live with HIV, the first thing I thought was straight away: I was going to die," he said.

"It's not like I blame people for not knowing this.

"This is a subject that because of the 80s scenarios people don't talk about it because that's the only information they have."

He added: "The overriding question that everybody said to me - the first question everyone says to me when I tell them I'm living with HIV - is 'Are you going to be OK?'

"And it's a really compassionate question to ask. But, this is meant the nicest way possible, it's a really uneducated question."

Thomas said revealing that he is living with HIV was similar to coming out as gay in 2009 because of "the fear, the hiding, the secrecy, the not knowing how people are going to react".

"But I think when it was all about my sexuality it just seemed like there was more empathy and more understanding because you had more knowledge, because you could turn on the telly and you could see that there was LGBT representation on most platforms."