Nazir Masih's story
"I will never forget the day I was diagnosed as HIV positive. I was working in Dubai in a shop, sending money back to Pakistan to support my wife and two children. Much to my surprise, I was promptly arrested and placed in solitary confinement before being deported back to Lahore. From there, things went from bad to worse, and soon everyone in my village knew I was HIV positive. People ostracised me. I was hated. In Pakistan, the awareness level of people living with HIV is extremely poor, and those that are infected are abhorred.
"As the first person in Pakistan to have his HIV status publicly disclosed, journalists took pictures of my family and children and published it in the local press. It was horrible. I would rather have died than spoil the lives of my family. I felt isolated and alone. I thought I was going to be stoned.
"Today, living with the stigma of AIDS constitutes my life's greatest challenge - both for myself and my family. There is a strong feeling of remorse and guilt for those people living with HIV. They feel they have lost everything. In 1999, I decided to dedicate my life to changing the lives and attitudes of people living with HIV by giving them hope when all else has been lost. With next to nothing in terms of resources, I started the New Light AIDS Control Awareness Group in Lahore.
"Our main emphasis is to save the lives of the families from this disease. Often by the time the husband discloses he is HIV positive, his spouse is already infected. We work to avoid this. Secondly, we want to decrease the inferiority complex of those people already infected. We encourage them to spend their lives positively and honourably.
"In conservative Pakistan, such topics are not easily discussed. Few understand what it is like to live with HIV - even less want to. Officially, there are 1,710 people living with HIV in Pakistan today, a nation of over 140 million. However, given the taboo nature of the subject, few infected people disclose their status. Some experts estimate the true number of HIV-positive people to be closer to 80,000."
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions