The HIV/AIDS memes are not funny.

There’s a new trend that I am observing and that I am compelled to push back against. It is the veiled attacks on people living with HIV/AIDS, disguised as “jokes”

It is typically in the form of memes, suggesting that living certain lifestyles will result in contraction of HIV. In itself, the overwhelming evidence is that this is true. Yes, certain lifestyles will indeed lead us to get HIV.

The problem is the use of HIV as a punchline.

As a country, we had long moved past the era of HIV/AIDS stigma. It is the heart of the collective issue we had to overcome, for HIV to be the public health win we can all truly celebrate today.

We laugh now, but just 30 years ago, HIV was a horror that decimated entire families in the cruellest of ways imaginable – slowly, painfully, and with a violent sucking out of one’s very soul.

When HIV came for you, it took everything.

The fight against HIV was won when people stepped forward to get tested, accepted their diagnosis, and got treatment.

The conversation surrounding HIV had to change for this to happen.

The things that you are doing today via those memes you are pushing – ridicule, harrassment, and fear-mongering – were the very things that had to be worked out of public discourse for the fight against HIV to advance.

We have come so far in this fight. Why are we again going back to the old, dark days of ignorance and uncalled-for cruelty?

Consider this truth: as more people take personal responsibility for their own sexual health, what is a more likely way for them to contract HIV than to have it transmitted to them by someone else? Have you considered that you can do everything right and yet have HIV brought to you?

Will this still be funny when it happens?

Your risk of acquiring HIV is as much a moral issue as it is epidemiological.

You laugh now because you are only considering the morality part. But what about the epidemiology? That is the part that we must all work towards because it is the one that holds the ultimate victory.

Our collective behaviour involves both prevention and control. Testing and treatment – which your memes are ridiculing – are the control part of the HIV fight. You should encourage, not suppress it.

Encourage testing. Encourage Treatment. Stop the stigma.