Our role model Florian wrote yesterday for his blog flosithiv.com received the Media Award of the German AIDS Foundation (DAS) yesterday evening at the German-Austrian AIDS Congress.
Florian, first of all, congratulations! DAS honoured your blog with the media award yesterday. For anyone who doesn't know the blog yet: What is it about?
Thank you very much for the congratulations! Yes, on my blog I write about my life with HIV and also introduce other committed people in short interviews - mainly from HIV self-help organisations. But I also report on great initiatives, medical developments and challenges that affect the HIV community.
Flosithiv.com aims to achieve one thing above all: To encourage people with HIV and to resolutely oppose all forms of stigmatisation and discrimination against people with HIV.
Your blog has been around for four years now. What have been the biggest highlights for you so far?
Certainly the conversations and interviews I was able to conduct at the World AIDS Conference in South Africa in 2016: The strength and hope that emanated from Durban from an entire generation of AIDS orphans was unimaginably inspiring. When you think about how many people are still denied access to effective HIV medication, our problems in this country seem small. To this day, I admire the commitment of every single person involved in HIV self-help. They keep the engine running!
What do your readers' reactions usually look like?
Fortunately, mostly positive. There have always been people who have thanked me, who have asked for specific advice or for whom the blog is simply a support in their own management of HIV. Some of the best messages are hanging above my screen at home: That motivates me even more than any award.
But of course I also have to deal with insults or racist remarks from time to time: Long live the virtual wastepaper basket.
And now a question that prizewinners are often asked: Do you already know what you want to use the prize money for?
Only one investment has already been finalised: something for my friend Thomas, who not only gives me great support at all times in our real life, but also in the virtual world at flosithiv.com. But I won't reveal any more. [laughs] Apart from that, I'm sure I'll come up with some great ideas.
Thank you very much for this interview, dear Flo. We wish you all the best for the future and look forward to many more exciting articles on flosithiv.com.
