Sunday 1 December is World AIDS Day, a global movement to unite people in the fight against HIV and AIDS
To raise more awareness about this, we sat down with clinical director for infectious diseases John Williams to ask more about how to break the stigma around AIDS and the ongoing work to stop the transmission of AIDS by 2030.
Why Stigma is a barrier?
According to Terrence Higgins Trust, a British charity campaigning and providing services relating to HIV and sexual health, stigma around HIV is because people may lack information about it.
These stigmas may cause those infected with HIV to have some kind of shame and not come forward to get treatment – which would harm their health and worsen the condition.
According to a Positive Voices survey 2022 published on Gov.uk website, it was found that:
- One in three people (32.1%) reported low self-esteem due to their HIV status
- One in seven people (13.7%) worried about being treated differently from other patients by healthcare staff
- One in ten people (10.4%) have not shared their HIV status with anyone aside from healthcare staff
- Almost half (45.1%) of the survey respondents reported feeling ashamed about their diagnosis
Unfortunately, it is still a reality for those living with HIV to live in a world where their infection is stigmatised by others.
But there are lots of ways to get help in such situations. This includes talking to a counsellor or joining a community forum to meet people with HIV, which are available on the Terrence Higgins Trust’s website.
Putting a spotlight on U=U
U=U stands for “Undetectable = Untransmittable” and is a global health campaign that aims to prevent HIV transmission.
This relates to the fact that people with HIV who are under treatment and have a fully suppressed viral load have a zero risk of transmitting the virus to their sexual partners.
But what does one mean by fully “suppressed viral load”?
The viral load refers to the test that measures the amount of HIV virus in the blood. It is used in the monitoring of people living with HIV, primarily to assess response to treatment.
HIV viral load is the single biggest determinant of HIV transmission; the higher the viral load the greater the risk of transmission and the lower the viral load the less likely a transmission is to occur.
In layman’s terms, individuals cannot pass HIV through sex when they have undetectable levels of HIV.
This prevention method is estimated to be 100% effective as long as the person living with HIV takes their medication as prescribed and gets and stays undetectable.
Stopping transmission by 2030
According to the HIV Action Plan for England published in 2023, new HIV transmissions in England have fallen by almost a third since 2019.
This means that England is on track to meet the ambition set in January 2019 to reduce new HIV transmissions by 80% in 2025 and end new transmissions by 2030.
South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is actively playing its part as the trust rolled out a pilot programme in early January 2024, which included routine testing for HIV, Hepatitis B and C, for adults aged between 19 to 70 – who already had their blood sampled at the A&E.
The ambitious initiative aimed to understand if it was an effective practice to screen people attending A&E for these viruses.
The final result?
Most patients were contacted, and, where necessary, started treatment. This has also, through treatment and partner notification, led to reduced transmission of these infections.
Get help today
There is information about how people, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, can access free HIV tests on the freetesting.hiv website.