RadioScope: Documentary on One: Stigma, RTÉ Radio One, Wednesday, 8pm
Ruth was "little Miss Healthy" who went to the gym several times a week and generally took care of herself. So when she decided to have a full medical check-up at the Well Woman clinic in Dublin she didn't expect to find anything wrong.
But she realised something was very badly amiss when she was phoned and asked to come to the centre immediately.
There she was told, she recalls, "You are HIV positive."
She remembers her sister shaking all over when she told her the news. Her mother's attitude, when they both went to tell her of the diagnosis, was one of immediate acceptance.
When Margaret, a single mother who lives in Kenya, was told she was HIV positive her sisters berated her, saying the news would kill their mother.
They never saw her again and, indeed, her entire family has cut its ties with her.
Neighbours were unwilling even to give her lifts to the hospital for fear of contamination or because they were afraid they might be asked to pay her hospital bills.
Instead her son had to stay home from school to mind her when she was sick.
Both women told their very different stories in this Documentary On One programme on the stigma attached to HIV.
While Ruth found acceptance from her family she still had to cope with the shock of learning that she was HIV positive. She also had to cope with the embarrassment, to put it mildly, of contacting her former boyfriends to tell them of her diagnosis. The one she was unable to contact directly was, as it happens, the man she believes passed the virus on to her years ago.
Today Ruth has come to terms with having the virus and regards herself as very lucky to have decided to have a full medical check-up - otherwise her HIV may have progressed to Aids before she got the news.
As it is, there is no reason to suppose that she will not live as normal a life span as anybody else, given the efficacy of treatments for HIV.
In Kenya, Margaret went to a friend of her mother's to ask for help. Although the friend was afraid of catching the virus from her she put her in touch with the Love and Hope project (linked to Trócaire) which helps people with HIV and Aids.
This has made a major difference to Margaret. But she worries that she may have passed the virus on to the father of one of her children. And she worries about how her children's lives will be affected by her condition - already they are the subject of cruel remarks and isolating behaviour at school.
The programme was a useful reminder that HIV and Aids are very much with us and have the capacity to turn lives upside down even though we are less scared of HIV than we were in the 1990s.