Our Medical Director, Dr Steve Taylor, speaks in this brand new podcast about this year’s World AIDS Day: where we’ve come from, where we are … and where we’re going.
For the first time, many organisations, including the British HIV Association, are stating that U=U – or Undetectable equals Untransmittable. This is a huge step, especially in fighting HIV-associated stigma.
If you can get diagnosed and get yourself on treatmwent, then essentially you won’t pass on HIV to your sexual partners.
The other thing is that the life expectancy of someone who is diagnosed early with HIV is now essentially the same as that of the general population. This is amazing!
However, there’s always bad news. And the bad news is that these are still over 10,000 people living with HIV in the UK who don’t know that they have it. This means that they present into hospitals late. This means they have a ten-fold higher chance of dying.
So what we need to do this World AIDS Day is making sure there are no people who remain undiagnosed, no people who are not on treatment, and we need to get to zero transmission. It’s an aspiration we need to be working to.
Watch the whole thing for Steve’s thoughts on how we achieve those goals. Together, we can. #WorldAIDSday #HIVzero
