Ross Burden The decision of the late celebrity chef Ross Burden not to tell his family he had HIV does not surprise the country's leading HIV-positive people's support and advocacy organisation. Burden was a celebrity TV chef in Britain and was a judge in the first season of Masterchef NZ. It was revealed at the weekend that had died in July of legionella pneumonia infection probably contracted at Auckland Hospital during leukemia treatment but he had not told his family he also had HIV. "This reflects the stereotypical fear of HIV," says Body Positive's General Manager Bruce Kilmister. "It's just so sad." Kilmister says there are many irrational fears surrounding HIV infection and when they are not confronted by facts "they can grow out of all proportion" to the reality of the disease. He says everyone who contracts HIV deals with it differently but Body Positive is "incredibly concerned about young gay and bi men not disclosing their status to friends and family or feeling the brunt of stigma." "At a young age in particular they are involved in the gay communities and are trying to form relationships and are therefore scared of experiencing the kind of rejection which is all too common," he says. Telling friends and family you are HIV-positive "is never easy, there is no easy way," Kilmister notes. "This difficulty is often because you are dealing with people whose impression of HIV is based on the terrible situations of the 1980s and '90s when getting HIV was almost invariably a death sentence." For those with HIV telling intimate partners such as those they are sexually attracted to or who are developing a closer bond with is so difficult that "most people living with HIV don't disclose in casual sexual encounters, which is their right to do as it is not required by law so long as they are using appropriate measures such as using condoms. It's when things develop further into a valued relationship that it is so extremely difficult to address." Kilmister says Body Positive encourages HIV-positive people to tell friends and family as soon as they can. Kilmister is not familiar with the medical details of Burden's final days and whether HIV played any role in his death "but living with HIV you're forever living with the concern that any interruption to good health is HIV-related... it causes you to have to be more careful about ailments that don't concern most people... and you find yourself having to engage more often with doctors and other health professionals."
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Tuesday, 25th November 2014 - 11:35am