Day 2: Imagine for one minute
Imagine for one minute that you are a young woman who has just arrived in a new country as a refugee. You are all alone, with your family and friends hundreds of miles away. You are hoping and searching for a better life.
As part of the entry process for the country you have come to, you have to have a medical check, a procedure that involves a test for HIV. Two weeks later your doctor calls you to say that the results have come in - you are HIV positive.
The news is devastating especially as you don't even know how you contracted the virus. Could it have been from the blood transfusion you had a few years ago? You are alone and you don't know what to do. You cannot call your family as the shame and stigma is too much to bear.
After months you manage to pick yourself up, despite being rejected and abused by your own community in your new country. You manage to complete a college course, get a job and start a new life. But soon your boss finds out about your status and makes it so difficult at work that you feel you have no choice but to leave. Then your friends start to desert you. But you know that you have to stay strong.
Some time later you meet a man and get married. From the start he knows about your status, but he is in denial. When the situation finally becomes clear to him and he leaves you, you are four months pregnant. You are left with a young son to bring up by yourself.
Reserves of strength
Now imagine that you have the strength and courage to stand up in front of 150 men and women and tell them your story. Can you?
Well, one woman did, and I although I heard it with my own ears, I am still amazed by her words and the way she told them.
One of the speakers today explained how HIV can bring out the very best and the very worst in humanity. This story shows the level of discrimination and stigma that still surrounds people living with HIV, but also the great reserves of strength that people are in possession of.
The woman whose story this was said that she was still healthy and well. However, had she been in another country where there was little healthcare and few people got the anti-retroviral medication they need, I am sure her story would have been very different. In fact, I can't help thinking that it's unlikely that she would have been able to tell her story today at all.