Focus on Living

More than 900,000 Americans are living with the HIV virus. Although thousands of them die each year, advances in medical treatment have allowed many people to control the infection and survive longer. What are their lives like? This book combines photographs and first-person acounts to document the feelings and experiences of a wide range of Americans carrying the virus. They speak candidly about their lives, relationships and the disease. By allowing HIV-positive people to speak openly about their lives, the book seeks to remove the curtain of invisibility that still cloaks the disease and to reduce the stigma that contributes to silence. Dr Paul Volberding, who has been treating patients with AIDS since the early days of the epidemic in 1981, contributes an introduction to the volume.