AIDS victim here for World AIDS Day

Christo Greyling, ordained Dutch Reformed Church minister from South Africa, is visiting New Zealand for World AIDS Day on Sunday 1 December. Christo is particularly qualified to speak on this deadly pandemic, as he has contracted the disease himself.

As a young theology student and a haemophiliac, Christo contracted the HIV virus through contaminated blood products in 1985. However, he says it’s not important how he got AIDS.

“How I got it is not the major message, because very often people look at other people who have it, wondering if they are guilty, or innocent, and for me, that’s not important; we are all the same. We’re all people who are broken.”

Christo, aged 38, is World Vision’s HIV/AIDS Coordinator for South Africa and Lesotho, and is just completing a Masters in Public Health from the Medical University of Southern Africa. He has been involved in the development of AIDS education programmes in South Africa since 1993, and has won awards and University fellowships for his pioneering work.

HIV/AIDS, he says, is no discriminator of persons. “The interesting thing about HIV/AIDS is that it doesn’t choose. It doesn’t choose who you are, if you’re black or white, rich or poor. It affects all families.”

Many wealthy people in South Africa have contacted him saying they are HIV positive. “It’s not as simple as saying poverty causes HIV. It is much more complex.”

He says there is still denial in Africa. “There’s a lot of fear. There’s a lot of stigma. And therefore people actually don’t want to know their HIV status. Many can’t afford the drugs that will help them live with the disease, so they just don’t want to know.”

However, he says “No one of us has any guarantee of life”. He says HIV is not a death sentence, it’s a life sentence, and his aim is to help people live in hope.

“My vision and World Vision’s aim is to unlock the potential that people have, to help them realise that the future is in their hands...and by living that dream, that vision for their future, they will change they way they live and make choices today.”