A South Hams woman who is HIV-positive has opened up about her condition in the hope that she can break the stigma surrounding it.

Aloma Watson-Ratcliffe, from Totnes, was just 12 years old when she found out she had contracted HIV.

Now 20, she has revealed what it was like to grow up with the condition and how she learned to deal with the negativity surrounding it.

Aloma said: “Seeing people in the public eye, like Jonathan Van Ness and Gareth Thomas, come forward and talk about their condition helps fight the stigma young people with HIV face.

“I met Gareth a month ago, and spoke to him about these issues in his documentary, Gareth Thomas: HIV and Me.”

Aloma got HIV from her mum Molly and was diagnosed when she was two and a half years old.

She said: “We don’t know for sure exactly how I acquired HIV.

“My mum was fit and healthy throughout her pregnancy and I had a completely normal, natural birth which was un-traumatic.

“Because of this, it is highly likely that transmission occurred later on, when she wasn’t so well, via breastfeeding.

“My mum knew she was HIV-positive and had done for quite a few years. She got it from an abusive ex-partner in her 20s.

“She wasn’t dying, she was healthy, and that was what she wanted for me.

“Breastfeeding really is a bonding thing - it’s a choice every mother has to make for themselves and I respect my mum’s choice.

“She had been advised by doctors not to breastfeed at all and had been told that I should take medication.

“But my parents - both of whom were healthcare professionals - had concerns about the risk of adverse reactions as well as the long term side effects.

“We had moved from London to Melbourne when I was very young. My mum went through various stages of being ill - she would get better for a time and then it would spiral.

“She died in October 2001, which is when I was diagnosed as HIV-positive, and six months later, when I was three, my father and I moved to Totnes.

“My father felt it would be better that I build up my natural immunity rather than start taking antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, and kids were having bad side effects.

“Friends of mine who were given the drugs all have messed up systems and different allergies or medical conditions. I have a very strong immune system, which I think is partly because I didn’t build up resistances to the drugs that I was given, so I think it was a really responsible choice not to be given them.

“I had regular blood tests in London to monitor the progress of the virus every three months.

“The doctors would explain the results using animations, but they didn’t give it a name. I knew there was something different about me.

“I had the same childhood illnesses as anyone else but I would get bruises - not painful, just starkly visible - and they would take a while to go away.

“I was 12 when the doctor told me I was HIV-positive for the first time.

“I remember being really scared and feeling like I was going to die.

“You hear about HIV and Aids in the playground; the dirty jokes, about Aids coming from monkeys. I already had this idea in my head that it was kind of a death sentence.

“I tried to keep it together and act really mature but my feelings around it were of fear and I didn’t know anyone who had HIV.

“Amongst my peers I was alone and that was quite a weight. It was a horrible secret that I didn’t understand. It made me a very closed child, with a lot of social issues.

“Some parents found out through teachers or other parents. They would approach my dad kind of in hysterics and ask, ‘why are you just letting her run around and drink the same water as us?’

“If I tell a friend, one of their first questions is, ‘Is it safe to drink the same water?’ It’s not transmitted by saliva but for some reason that’s a myth that’s really hard to get rid of.

“Teachers would come up to me out of the blue and be all pitying - they would ask me, ‘how are you getting on with our medication?’ And I was like, ‘It’s none of your business’.

“At 15 I saw a therapist/counsellor for other reasons and I told her and started to cope with it.

“Then the following year my step-mum heard about the Children’s HIV Association (CHIVA) camp on the radio. It’s for 100 young people who have HIV and for five days you get to learn about the disease and sex education and do fun things.

“I was terrified to go. I didn’t know it was going to be this life-changing thing but it really was.

“It was the first time in my life that we were able to say ‘HIV’ all the time. The volunteers would constantly say it, we all had it and it was not scary.

“We could talk about medication and side effects; we could talk about jokes that we had heard in the playground and we could laugh about them.

“It was an incredibly important experience because the rest of the world doesn’t feel safe - in the playground, you don’t feel safe; in relationships, you don’t feel safe until you’ve told them and you work out their reaction.

“Some people don’t feel safe in their families because of the stigma about it. So being safe and happy is unusual and important.

“The NHS says treatment can be started at any point following diagnosis, ‘depending on your circumstances and in consultation with your HIV doctor’.”

Amanda Williams, consultant paediatrician and chairwoman of CHIVA, said: “There’s been a changing picture in research around HIV and a huge change in the drugs available and evidence about the best time to treat children.

“Because of trials, we know the side effects and the benefits of drugs more clearly now than 20 years ago when parents then would have been less sure about the side effects than they are now.

“It’s always been the case that any child who shows symptoms and whose immune system has been dropping would have been treated.

“But there have always been differences where families are not keen on medication because of their concerns around potential side-effects, or simply their beliefs about health and the stigma.”

Aloma said: “I take one tablet a day. It keeps the virus dormant in my body. It’s in my blood but it’s not able to mutate.

“Some people can have side effects from their drugs but I haven’t had any bad side effects, so I will continue to take them.

“Having HIV does not mean that you’re a disgusting person - that’s why I created a performance about it, which I recently staged at the school of art in Plymouth, where I have been a student.

“When I finished the performance there was a really long silence then everyone was clapping and people were crying.

“I think there’s been an improvement in attitude but there is still a lack of education in schools about HIV.

“It’s not really covered in sex education, it’s only covered as a sexually transmitted disease, which is not how I got it.

“It’s always challenging telling partners, often the conversation is around passing it on and safety.

“Most of my previous partners have not had a problem with my status once it’s been discussed in depth.

“Even though I am public about my status, when I care about how someone could react it doesn’t matter how much practice I get because it will still be emotional.

“I’m seeing someone at the moment, and they are perfectly fine with it, so long as we can be honest and they can ask me about any fears or questions, it works.”

There are about 530 HIV-positive children and young people under 18 in the UK.

There were 4,500 pregnancies to HIV-positive women in the UK and Ireland between 2015 and 2018.

Of those, 0.3 per cent transmit the virus to their children, either through pregnancy, birth or through breastfeeding.

Taking antiretroviral treatment correctly during pregnancy and breastfeeding can virtually eliminate the risk of passing on the virus to the baby.

If you’d like to watch Aloma’s interview in the BBC documentary Gareth Thomas: HIV and Me, click here.