HELPFUL HINTS FOR FAMILY LIFE Why is there still a stigma about HIV?

People with HIV can now take a daily pill and not even pass the virus to others through sex.

Since the 1980s, when HIV and AIDS first became widely-known, detection and treatment has come on in leaps and bounds – although much of the stigma remains.

People diagnosed with

HIV, which is the virus that can trigger the immune deficiency syndrome AIDS, can now take a daily pill which makes it undetectable and untransmissible to others. However, many people don’t realise this, and still worry that coming into contact with someone who has the virus means they’ll catch it themselves.

Richard Angell, the campaigns director at the HIV charity the Terrence Higgins Trust (THT, tht.org. uk) says: ‘In the eighties when AIDS first hit, there was very little you could do for people other than care for them at end of life. Treatment for the virus became available in 1996, but the issue with HIV is that while you can now take a daily pill to control the virus, there’s no pill you can take to control the stigma. ‘Regrettably, half of British people wouldn’t kiss someone with living HIV, so the stigma is real and really impacts people living with HIV.’

There are many people affected by that unnecessary stigma – about 107,000 people live with

HIV in the UK and Ireland, and while many may be gay or bisexual men, they’re by no means the only group of people who have the virus. The THT says that of the 4,139 people diagnosed with HIV in the UK in 2019, 41 per cent were gay or bisexual men, but 1,559 heterosexual people were diagnosed with it too. Of these, 37 per cent were from the other high risk group of black African men and women. In addition, women accounted for 28 per cent of new diagnoses.

Mr Angell stresses that because of the huge advances in treatment, those diagnosed with HIV can lead happy, healthy lives and have a normal life expectancy if they take effective medication.