KEY POINTS:
This ain't easy. To be 21, single, vivacious, living and working in the music entertainment industry and labelled "the HIV girl".
Jewel Grimshaw, now 31, a former manager of the Power Station venue, was that girl. She has lived almost half of her life with the virus.
She
hasn't developed Aids, has been well and, with a light medical regime, expects to continue to be. "I am hoping I will never die of an Aids-defined illness." she says.
Grimshaw, who was in a steady heterosexual relationship, should have been low-risk. "I never thought it would happen to me, but it did."
That's the theme of a regular talk she gives to senior high school students trained by Auckland Sexual Health to be peer counsellors.
They are her perfect audience because Grimshaw was their age (16) when she contracted the virus from her boyfriend. "I didn't know heterosexuals could get it," she says. Neither used needles but nor did they use condoms.
Soon after she was diagnosed, Grimshaw trained with the Aids Foundation to be a speaker. "I didn't see many others like me who were open about it." She suspects the stigma keeps most quiet but she decided she had a message that needed to be heard. "I thought, 'if it happened to me, how many other women are going to be affected?"'
She tells her story matter-of-factly. A sexual health check three months into that teenage relationship was negative, as she expected. Her next - soon after the relationship ended three years later - was not.
"It was an absolute shock," says Grimshaw. Being ushered into a sideroom with comfortable chairs was the first indication all was not well. "I wondered whether I was pregnant or whether they had found cancerous cells."
There had been some unfortunate results, the doctor told her. She was 21. She wanted a cigarette and her mother.
Her mother arrived and asked "you're pregnant?".
"I said, 'Mum, I've got something to tell you. My HIV test has come back positive. I have HIV, which causes Aids'. I began to cry."
Her mother kissed her tears away then turned in confusion to the medical staff: "Oh, can I catch it from that ?"
Such ignorance is common, says Grimshaw. She was ignorant too, back then. She now knows it's difficult to pass on - shared needles among drug users and unprotected sex are the risk areas.
It's been a decade since she was diagnosed. Initially there was anger, then depression. Later came the resolve to get on with it. "Like I said, I never thought it would happen to me - it was a gay disease."
She was advised to be careful who she told but decided to use herself as an example. "I've had a lot of experiences where people were ill-informed and [therefore] fearful. Some thought they might catch it just by sitting next to me." They associated it with gay men and needle users, and lumped her in with that scene.
She once overheard a nightclub staff member point her out with the comment "she's an Aids chick". Acquaintances stopped greeting her with a kiss.
Her policy was to be upfront about it. She experienced a lot of rejection. Men either didn't understand or didn't want the complication, which she understood. "If I was male and had the choice between a woman who was HIV-positive or one who was HIV-negative, I'd go for the negative."
Though it reduced the chances of casual relationships, it also filtered superfluous ones. Those without a genuine connection tended to fizzle but she wasn't devoid of a social life. When she was single (she is in a long-term relationship) she joined a dating website.
"There are people who are prepared to learn about it and the precautions needed to ensure it is not passed on."
Grimshaw doesn't believe her teenage boyfriend knew he was a carrier. He was reluctant to have a test after she told him of her diagnosis in June 1997. His new partner tested positive the next month and he came down with pneumonia soon after. Tests showed he had Aids.
"They reckon he'd had [HIV] maybe 10 years because his condition was so progressed and yet during the time we were together he never got sick, his immune system was great."
He is on a range of pills but is well, 10 years on and, says Grimshaw, still doesn't know how he contracted the disease. She believes she has pinpointed how she got it - an occasion when her partner's foreskin was torn, causing it to bleed.
"What's my message? HIV doesn't discriminate. Heterosexual or homosexual, put yourself in a situation where you can be exposed and it will take you. Your background doesn't matter, where you are from, rich or poor ... It can happen."
The risk area is unprotected sex. Grimshaw gives the example of a fellow member of Positive Women - a nationwide support organisation for people with HIV and Aids. A middle-aged divorcee in a new relationship discovered too late that her partner was having a homosexual affair.
"You never know what the other is up to," says Grimshaw.
What began as a disease related to homosexual men and drug users has increasingly afflicted heterosexuals, with a roughly equal proportion of New Zealanders becoming infected through heterosexual contact during the past 10 years, according to data collected by Otago University's Aids Epidemiology Group.
In the most recent information (January to June this year), 84 people (62 males, 22 females) were newly diagnosed with HIV through antibody-testing, of whom 40 were men infected through sex with men and 30 were people infected through heterosexual contact.
Eleven people were notified with Aids during the same period, of whom five were men infected through sex with men, five were men infected through heterosexual contact and one was a man infected through injecting drugs.
The number of people diagnosed with HIV in New Zealand has risen since 2003, with those years among the highest recorded. The same trend has occurred with other sexually transmitted diseases, syphilis, gonorrhoea and - the most commonly diagnosed in New Zealand - chlamydia.
Researchers say it is now clear that programmes to control HIV and other STIs should be linked.
"In general, a person infected with HIV is more likely to pass on HIV to his or her sexual contacts if also infected with another STI ... similarly, an uninfected person tends to be more susceptible to HIV if they have another STI," says an Aids Epidemiology Group report.
Much of the rise in the incidence of heterosexual cases of both syphilis and HIV is explained by international travel and migration.
New Zealand's HIV data for 2006 shows that of the 70 men who had sex with men diagnosed with the virus that year, 74 per cent were infected in New Zealand. That's in marked contrast to the 85 heterosexuals (40 men and 45 women) diagnosed with HIV in 2006, 82 per cent of whom were infected overseas.
Migration was a significant factor. 2006 was the first year that those applying to live in New Zealand were tested for HIV. Of the 49 diagnosed through immigration medicals, 71 per cent were by heterosexual infection. The main ethnic group were African (61 per cent), followed by Asian (22 per cent).
Which means the group most at risk of becoming infected in New Zealand is still homosexual men. But there is still a small, largely forgotten group. Jewel Grimshaw's group; the group most likely to think they have little to worry about and which, in 2006, numbered 15 people.
Grimshaw left the music entertainment industry, having decided the hours were not conducive to good health, and has been temping. She's reached a point, she says, where she feels ready and able to make plans.
"I recently started thinking about what I am going to do about my future because I realise I do have a future. I've been on medication now for two years and my immune system is as good as anyone's and my viral load is undetectable."
Though uncertain exactly what that future may entail, she is determined that telling her cautionary tale to help spare others will be part of it.
Information sources
* Positive Women Inc, a peer support organisation for women living with HIV/Aids. Most involved in its operation are HIV positive. Phone: 09 309 1858; 0800 769 848. www.positivewomen.org.nz
* Ministry of Health, www.moh.govt.nz/aids
* New Zealand Aids Foundation, www.nzaf.org.nz
* Auckland Sexual Health, www.sexfiles.co.nz
