On Tuesday, Charlie Sheen came out to the world as HIV-positive. He is one of 36 million people living with HIV but for the next few days it may seem he is the only one.

Why? Well, we're talking a Hollywood celebrity, and not just any celebrity: this is Charlie "tiger blood, hashtag winning, women beating, drug using" Sheen; one of the great internet meltdowns of our time, who unlike his "out of control" celebrity peers found a crass, cruel way to profit from his downward spiral. He is a walking punchline, or to others (mainly men's rights activists) a cult hero.

Sheen made drugs, wild sex and partying part of his brand. Which is exactly why the revelation of his HIV status is catnip to the purring moralisers and wowsers who still think HIV is something certain types of people deserve to catch.

Here's the thing, though: no one deserves to acquire HIV, whether they are a violent misogynist millionaire, a prisoner injecting drugs or a newborn baby in Vietnam. Whether one acquires it through an orgy, an accident, sharing needles or sexual assault is immaterial to the fact that every single person living with HIV deserves access to treatment and the right to go about their lives with dignity and privacy.

Unfortunately, the stigma around living with HIV after 30-odd years and 39 million deaths means a great deal of unnecessary and harmful misinformation. This stigma then leads to very real harm being done to the health and wellbeing of millions of people around the world.

Charlie Sheen is just one of those people. Another one is me, an openly HIV-positive gay man living in Sydney. Between Sheen's millions of dollars and my subsidised access to meds, we have it pretty good. As drag artist Taylor Mac once said, "comparison is violence", but in this instance it may be important because the majority of the 36 million people living with HIV aren't in such a good position.

Spare a thought for the 24 million people who cannot access the life-saving treatments he and I both take every day. More than one million of these people will die this year of AIDS-related causes, deaths that since 1996 have been completely unnecessary (after combination therapies were introduced). The tragedy is not that people keep becoming HIV-positive but that these AIDS-related deaths continue because the price of HIV treatments imposed by patent holders is too high and in some countries government systems created to distribute the treatments are flawed or corrupt.

Beyond access to treatments, there are millions of stories around the world of people living with HIV who will never get the media attention enjoyed by Sheen. Stories like the women abducted by Islamic State who are raped by soldiers, some of whom then acquire HIV. Reportedly, the soldiers who become infected through these acts of rape are then deployed as suicide bombers, and the women are murdered.

There are more stories, such as the 8000 HIV-positive people in  eastern Ukraine, whose access to meds is hindered by military blockades on both sides of the conflict. Or Michael Johnson, the young black man from Missouri currently serving a 30-year prison sentence for not disclosing his HIV status and passing on the virus to one person and "exposing" four others.

Sheen will not be one of those statistics, and neither will I. We sit atop a pyramid of privilege that means our lives as HIV-positive people will be long and largely healthy ones at that. While Sheen announcing his HIV status doesn't stop any of the aforementioned HIV tragedies occurring, it does however shine a much-needed light on HIV awareness and gets people talking.

We need people to keep talking about HIV. Not for Sheen or I, but for all of us to remind the world that each and every person living with HIV needn't live under a cloud of stigma or persecution. That none of us deserved to catch it but that we all deserve to live with it, free from the threat of being cast out by our families, denied medication from uncaring governments or thrown in jail for simply wanting to maintain our privacy.

Nic Holas is the co-founder of HIV advocacy group The Institute of Many (TIM).