Brent Stirton/Getty Images

I went to Ukraine to work on HIV issues because, at the time, it was experiencing the fastest acceleration of HIV infection in the world. I had very little time on this trip, it’s an expensive place to work and I was covering the worst elements of the HIV crisis in a 14-day sprint across the country. After a whirlwind tour across half Ukraine, a horror show of disease, ignorance and neglect, I came eventually to Donetsk, a bleak industrial ruin of a town.

Industry has collapsed since the fall of communism and the majority of the population live in the abject poverty of prolonged unemployment, men and women living each day under a cloud of impotent fatalism. There is very little possibility of improved circumstances and people know that. They looked at me with a mixture of resignation and contempt, as well as a rare opportunity for cash made manifest.

(more…)

Tom Stoddart/Getty Images

I have been documenting the AIDS pandemic in Sub-Sahara Africa for about five years. Nearly 9,000 Africans die from the disease everyday, leaving millions of children orphaned. By the time you have finished watching the short, yet powerful film below, around 30 people will have died from AIDS.

You can’t escape AIDS in Africa - you are either infected or affected.

 

 Tom Stoddart video [4:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Photo by Brent Stirton

I was in Kenya for World AIDS Day (2006), a place where the number of women infected by the disease outnumbers men up to 5 to 1 in certain communities. I was walking around Kenwa AIDS Clinic on the outskirts of Nairobi when I noticed a small sparse ward at the end of a cramped corridor. A tall, thin, sober looking man greeted me, explaining formally that he was the head nurse and could help me. I explained that I was in Kenya looking at HIV issues on behalf of the Global Business Coalition against AIDS, TB and Malaria. The man then invited me into a small testing room to show me how they were doing the tests.

Sitting in a chair besides a nurse in a brilliant white smock was a small man wearing a woolen hat with is hand bandaged. He looked at me with my cameras and tried to get up to introduce himself. Embarrased by this gesture I motioned to him to stay seated and asked if he would mind if I photographed him being tested.

He looked at the nurse, looked back at me and nodded. He knew he was sick, he wanted to know for sure what was wrong with him. He wanted access to medicine if he was HIV+. The first test indicated that he was, but in Kenya they currently do two tests where they have the kits available. The second test involved a litmus style strip with 2 bars across opposite sides, a drop of blood is placed on a sensitive panel, and if the other bar becomes illuminated then the person is HIV+ . The small man in the hat picked up the strip while the test was processing and watched silently as he saw the second bar come into being on the test strip. He looked at the bar, looked up at me and held out the strip for me to see. That’s when I shot this picture.

Brent Stirton/Getty Images

A girl stands in a field wearing a white dress March 28, 2004 in Richards Bay, South Africa. She is an orphan whose parents died of AIDS. Getty Images is partnering with the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS ongoing projects.

In recognition of World AIDS Day (December 1, 2006) I am in Nairobi, Keny with the GBC working to combat the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The main focus of my trip is to document, through imagery, HIV+ orphans and other vulnerable children, women’s empowerment and healthcare accessibility.

Today, approximately forty million people are living with HIV worldwide - a number that continues to rise everywhere, every day. Only by continuing to educate and raise awareness can we work to prevent the spreading of this disease any further.

AIDS sufferers, no matter where they live, generally have on thing in common - the neglect of government, a lack of understanding from their communities, prejudice, ostracism and a general lack of acceptance and support. Most sufferers have been surprised by the disease - it would have snuck up on them in an environment without information or education. The fact is that what is most common to AIDS worldwide is ignorance. That is how the disease is able to inundate itself into people’s lives on such a grand scale.

While in Kenya, I am simply attempting to provide good people with a visual body of evidence which they can use to compel the relevant authorities to act. My pictures are my reaction to what I am seeing and for the most part, I have seen great dignity and stoicism in the people that I have photographed.

In the cycle of human drama that is constantly presented to a working photojournalist, I think we have to find new ways to tell an old story. If we don’t, we risk that story slipping into oblivion and falling off the radar of collective social responsibility. All I am trying to do is tell that story in the most powerful way I can under the limited circumstance that time brings to any story.