Latest news with #HIVAIDS
CBC
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Pete Crighton dishes on music, sex and finding his soundtrack to queer joy
Social Sharing Growing up in the midst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic left Pete Crighton with a huge fear of sex — and he threw himself into music as a way to cope with those anxieties. "Even before I was struggling to make sense of my queerness, music just was another world for me," said Crighton on Bookends with Mattea Roach. "It was just a play-land where I didn't have to worry about my peers. I didn't have to worry about what I said or looked like or acted like." It wasn't until his 40s that Crighton knew he needed to face his fears and figure out how to live his queer life to the fullest. In his memoir The Vinyl Diaries, he takes readers on this journey — pairing big moments with the music that shaped them. On Bookends, Crighton tells Roach about his later-in-life exploration of sex and why music was so formative to his queer experience. Mattea Roach: This memoir is structured in a way where you're tying events in your life, relationships that you're in, to the music that you were listening to at the time. When did you realize that this nonlinear structure of association was the way that you wanted to write about your life? Pete Crighton: It's a great question. I don't know that I really consciously thought about it and it really just happened organically. It's the way I move through the world. All my markers are through what records I've bought, what records I've listened to and how I remember my life is really through those moments. All my markers are through what records I've bought, what records I've listened to and how I remember my life is really through those moments. - Pete Crighton I kept really detailed journals and when I would go back and look at things that I wanted to write about, I would actually have written down like, we listened to this record. This song was the one that Preston really liked. So I had this record of these things. When I would think of something I wanted to write about, it would just be in this journal, all of these associations from different points in my life because of those record albums and those songs. You were in this long-term relationship through your entire 30s. In your memoir, you write about how it was a little bit stifling for you that a lot of your creative impulses and interests didn't have space to breathe in that relationship. Can you tell me a bit about how you realized that that was not working? With all due respect to the person in question, it was all about me. It wasn't about him, but it was a slow build for sure. I was really, really terrified of HIV and AIDS when I was a youngster. So just the idea of being married, for lack of a better word, in a very heteronormative kind of way, was my salvation. To me, that's how I'm going to survive. That's how I'm going to thrive. I didn't really get to date a lot of people. I didn't get a lot of connections with other people. So I didn't really know what worked for me and what would bounce. I was with this person for over 10 years and it probably wasn't a great match for either one of us, to be perfectly frank. But one of the things I point to in the book is that he hated my record collection. That should have been a sign right from the start that maybe we weren't compatible because it's such an important part of my life. I think it's just those things that build up over time. There was no real thing that I could point to to be like, this was the day that it became untenable for me. You talk about marriage and monogamy as this kind of salvation, was the word that you used. Can you talk more about that? Why did it feel so central that you'd be willing to sacrifice some of your major interests and freedom and creativity in order to access monogamy? I was just so terrified of sex because of the HIV/AIDS crisis. I was 16 years old when Rock Hudson died and that was this big moment in the mass culture's understanding of what HIV and AIDS was and it just shut me down from truly wanting to explore my queerness and particularly my sexuality. So it wasn't so much marriage that I was after, but that idea of a monogamous relationship where we knew no one else was having sex with anyone else. And that felt safe to me. That felt like a protection from the thing that I was most afraid of, which was HIV and AIDS through sexual contact. What's really fascinating about this book is you tell this story about getting to explore hook up culture in your 40s, which is a story that I've heard about from talking to guys your age who've had that experience, but not a story that I'd read about in a book before. Why did you want to dig into that part of your journey? In fairness, to see it. I hadn't read this story and I grew up thinking your mid 40s is sort of like you're done, like that's the end of your life and you might retire and then you might play some golf or something like that. And I had never really read about this midlife excellence or excitement. So that was a real part of it for me was like, "Let's just be honest about what this journey is." For so long I wasn't honest about my own desires and my own sexuality that it just felt like laying it out really openly felt like the right choice to do as an artist and a writer.
Bloomberg
08-05-2025
- Health
- Bloomberg
South Africa Says AIDS Drugs Available Despite US Funding Cut
South Africa 's government said its HIV-AIDS treatment program is fully funded for the current financial year despite the withdrawal of support from the US, and all patients should continue to receive their medication. About 7.8 million South Africans, or almost 13% of the population, live with the virus that causes AIDS — the world's biggest HIV epidemic. About 17% of the funding for the country's HIV-AIDS program has come from America's Presidential Emergency Funding for Aids Relief, or Pepfar, but President Donald Trump suspended that program in January, meaning 7.5 billion rand ($414 million) needs to be found to plug the gap.
India.com
28-04-2025
- Health
- India.com
These animals are most likely to be affected by HIV AIDS; dogs and cats show symptoms like...
HIV AIDS in animals: Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection was first identified in Central Africa. Here, the virus initially spread among chimpanzees. While chimpanzees are the only animals reliably infected with HIV, other animals like gibbons, mice, rabbits, baboons, and rhesus monkeys have been shown to be infected under certain conditions, but they haven't developed the disease. Important animal models for HIV research include great apes, Asian monkeys with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), and infections of ungulates and cats with HIV-related lentiviruses. From chimpanzees, this virus spread to humans. In the late 18th century, HIV began to spread from chimpanzees to humans. The virus found in chimpanzees of the same species is called Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV). It is said that when humans hunted chimpanzees for food, they came into contact with the blood of infected chimpanzees, which is how the virus spread to humans. In cats, this virus is referred to as Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV), which is similar to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Its symptoms vary. After an initial infection, some cats may appear healthy for several years. Later, this virus begins to weaken the nervous system. FIV is primarily transmitted through biting from infected cats. Its symptoms include fever, weight loss, lethargy, loss of appetite, inflammation of the gums and mouth. Other symptoms are chronic or recurrent infections in the eyes, skin, upper respiratory tract, or bladder. Some cats may experience neurological disorders like seizures or behavioural changes.
The Hindu
22-04-2025
- Health
- The Hindu
Over 9,400 new HIV cases detected in Telangana in 2024
As many as 9,415 people in Telangana tested positive for HIV in 2024, according to data presented by the Telangana State AIDS Control Society (TSACS). The figures emerged during a high-level review meeting chaired by Minister for Health C. Damodar Raja Narasimha on Monday. A total of 19.02 lakh individuals were tested for HIV in the State during the year. Officials informed the Minister that approximately 1.24 lakh people living with HIV were currently receiving free treatment through the network of Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) centres across Telangana. TSACS officials said that more than 5,000 HIV patients were concentrated in 13 districts, while another 13 districts had between 2,000 to 5,000 patients. The Minister instructed health officials to scale up testing in all districts, especially targeting high-risk groups, and to intensify awareness programmes to curb the spread of the virus. He stressed the need to regularly assess the performance of NGOs working in collaboration with TSACS. 'The State government is committed to the goal of eliminating HIV AIDS by 2030. All our efforts should be directed toward this objective,' he said.
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Leaders in volunteerism look to the future of service in Utah
'I've learned to listen, I've learned to observe. I've learned not to judge and forgiveness, and those are elements I practice every day because I need to know and understand and feel for whoever I am with, because they have a story too that I need to hear,' said former national Peace Corps director Jody Olsen Wednesday as she reflected on a life of volunteerism. During a panel hosted by the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah, Olsen shared how her years of service and volunteering — in Africa and Asia and the Pacific, in places like Tunisia and Togo — have impacted her and why she wants to help inspire more young people to get involved in service. Wednesday's panel focusing on volunteerism and civic engagement is a part of the institute's monthly newsmaker breakfast series. Alongside Olsen, the panel also featured Loggins Merrill, director of UServeUtah, and Shireen Ghorbani, a former Salt Lake County councilmember. The institute's director, Natalie Gochnour, moderated the panel. Olsen, who was born in Utah and studied at the University of Utah, served as a leader in the Peace Corps for years and was the 20th director of the Peace Corps from 2018 to 2021. Among many other accomplishments, Olsen opened a Peace Corps program in Vietnam, led HIV AIDS mitigation in Africa and also led the evacuation of Peace Corps volunteers around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Out of all 50 states, Utah ranks the highest in volunteerism based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau and from the Office of Research in AmeriCorps. Merrill, a Utah native, shared that Utah has ranked No. 1 in volunteerism since it started being tracked in 2002. Merrill leads UServeUtah, the state's commission on service and volunteerism, which was started 30 years ago. Gochnour added that in 2023, 46.6% of Utahns formally volunteered. One focus of the panel was getting the younger generation more into service. Olsen shared that recently she has been speaking with college students and other young people in an effort to understand how to get them more involved in service. Many young people don't get involved because they don't feel that they can make a difference and they're scared of the world they live in. After speaking to some students at the University of Minnesota, she asked them what they needed to be more engaged in service and volunteering. 'They said, We need your stories. We need your mentorship, and we need heroes,' Olsen said. Olsen said she realized that society is destroying some heroes and young people need examples, they need stories and they need heroes to inspire them to be involved and engaged. She said it is so important for people with experience to mentor the next generation and share stories and help them know what they can do and the impact they can have. The advice works with anyone who is nervous about getting involved. 'Putting ourselves in the shoes and the minds and the thoughts of those that are more nervous and showing the way, and more than showing, being the way for others, is so key,' Olsen said. Ghorbani, who also served in the Peace Corps, echoed what Olsen said about being an example and added that sharing what you're doing to serve and what it looks like can be very helpful. She recently has been using social media to invite people to serve with her and different places and has received many questions about what it looks like and details of what people would actually experience as a volunteer for specific things. As she has started answering these questions and helping people better understand what they're getting into, she has seen more people join her in service. 'We can invite people into practice of engaging in some of these more difficult spaces or unknown spaces, if they have that person who's willing to kind of take their hand and lead them through it,' Ghorbani said. She also encouraged those who are nervous about serving to find someone to be their guide. 'If you can find that person that's going there, that is there, and if they can help you, or if you can just ask, 'I'd like to do this, but here are the things I am nervous about,' that's reasonable,' Ghorbani said. 'It's difficult to engage in some of these most difficult failures in our society, but it is also possible.' The panelists all emphasized that making a difference is something that starts in our own communities and our own neighborhoods. 'If we don't understand our neighbors, if we don't understand the challenges that they have, if we're unwilling to have conversations on our own street, organize our own community, it gets really hard to figure out how to push back or be effective in this broader context,' Ghorbani said. 'We have to be working together to understand the needs in our community.' Working together with our neighbors and communities is also important to helping people become more involved. Merrill shared that one of the biggest barriers to getting involved is not knowing what to do or where to go. But you can invite your neighbors and those around you to join you in service it helps strengthen communities and gets more people serving. Olsen emphasized that a major part of this civic engagement is trust, specifically highlighting when she served in the Peace Corps in different countries. 'I had to trust strangers, I had to learn language, I had to give myself away into a community that was a strange community, but through that experience was trust. I trusted they trusted. They gave me more of themselves. I gave them more of myself.' Merrill added that service is about connection and finding a way to build connections with others. 'Find a way in how you connect in your community, what is important to you, and go and stand up and do it be a piece of it,' he said. 'So find a way to connect that human to human connection. No matter what it is that you're doing.' The panelists also addressed the challenges that those in service and volunteerism are facing due to federal funding cuts to nonprofits and organizations like USAID. 'It is an interesting time that we live in right now, and there's a lot of things coming at us very quickly and very fast and right now in our field,' Merrill said. He added that so far he is not sure how national decisions will impact UServeUtah and other service organizations in the state, but that they are preparing for whatever shifts or changes may come. Ghorbani said that it is important for individuals and those at the state level to continue to stay engaged and to show up and serve. 'If the federal government is not going to show up, I think we really have to ask ourselves if the state, if we live in a state that is willing to show up,' Ghorbani said. All the panelists emphasized the humanity that comes with civic engagement and serving others and how important it is for us to preserve that humanity. Olsen quoted former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who said that the strongest asset of the U.S. is humanity, empathy and being present to help others. 'It's our humanity, it's our connection, is what our biology is as to who we should be as people, that's now being lost,' Olsen said. Olsen finished with three invitations: to find one moment of joy in each day; to find one word of gratitude every day; and to think everyday 'when you put your head on the pillow, can you say to yourself, I made a difference somehow, somewhere.'
