Our Christmas campaign this year focuses on challenging stigma

In Atlanta last week at the launch of the campaign – where a gay black man has a 50 per cent chance of contracting HIV – our US correspondent Andrew Buncombe interviewed someone who was told to keep her status as a secret ‘between her and God’

For our Christmas campaign, we have partnered with the Elton John AIDS Foundation to raise funds for their vital programmes around the world. From testing to treatment, their work, with local organisations around the world, is aimed at helping to create a world which is Aids-free.

While the HIV virus and Aids disease still, for many, can carry stigma and shame, with access to education and treatment, the situation now is far from removed from the doom-laden message of the 1980s.

As part of our campaign, we will be speaking to people affected by HIV/Aids around the world and reporting on their stories. Our correspondents in the US, and in Kiev and Delhi, are meeting with beneficiaries and with EJAF partner staff around the world to hear these extraordinary stories of ordinary lives. These are people who received an HIV diagnosis but who are living fulfilled, successful and resolutely “normal” lives in the wake of it.