“HIV and AIDS cannot be used interchangeably or lumped together, because they are not the same thing”
The Stuck Record: The SA media and HIV terminology
JournAIDS
21 September 2011
“Aids virus”, “HIV-AIDS”; The South African media continue to use outmoded, out dated and outright incorrect terms when writing about the HIV epidemic.
Articles in today’s editions of The New Age (TNA) and The Times are the latest to exemplify this trend.
To get straight to the heart of the matter, HIV and AIDS cannot be used interchangeably or lumped together, because they are not the same thing.
HIV is the virus which causes AIDS, a syndrome.
For further information on why using the correct HIV-terminology is important, please see our growing collection of blogs on the subject:
- Papers should use "AIDS" carefully
- Bad reporting: Revealing the real scourge
- The New Age comes to terms with HIV terminology
- Slapdash: Slashes and dashes mar HIV journalism
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