"I did not have the experience that I hear many of my fellow community members did. I wasn't distraught about it, I wasn't timid about it. It wasn't gloom and doom for me because I was educated."
"For people of color, Black people, the hair would change. If you had coarse hair, and all of a sudden, because of the medication you were taking, you [experienced visible changes that could out you to your community]."
Reggie Dunbar II received an HIV diagnosis in 1985, a decade after retiring from military service. Unlike many in his community experiencing despair during the AIDS crisis, Dunbar remained composed due to his education about the condition. His doctor expressed greater concern than he did. With a stable T-cell count, he avoided early medications like AZT, which caused visible side effects that risked outing Black patients in church-centered communities. He later began taking Atripla, a combination antiretroviral introduced in the mid-2000s that transformed HIV into a manageable chronic condition. Now 71, Dunbar founded and leads Poz Military & Veterans USA INTL, an advocacy organization supporting former and active servicemembers living with HIV, despite ongoing stigma.
Read at Advocate.com
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