“While we talk about ‘game-changers’ in terms of bio-medical or pharmaceutical solutions, the real game changer is the positive person.”
Since the beginning of the HIV epidemic, from the early ’80s to the present day, gay men living with HIV (PLHIV) have been at the forefront of embracing the latest changes to HIV health in the ‘fight for our lives’ to empower ourselves, support and educate each other to take control of HIV.
Several crucial shifts in the HIV landscape have been readily embraced by PLHIV as activists and mobilisers in advancing that agenda.
Like our peers who found hope and life in antiretroviral therapies and championed public access to the medications in the late ’80s, we rapidly adopted the new combination antiretroviral treatment (cART) in the mid-to-late ’90s, which improved our life expectancy from months to decades.
In 2011, the evidence which proved the protective effect of early treatment against HIV for negative partners in the case of serodiscordant couples (where one partner is HIV positive and the other HIV negative) saw positive people support the health and safety of their loved ones by embracing this early game change.
The NSW Health Minister Jillian Skinner MP made an appeal to PLHIV on World AIDS Day 2013 about our choice to take control of HIV when starting treatment.
Two short years later with the release of the START study findings and the benefits to the individual and their community around starting treatment earlier than ever, we threw our support behind this latest game changer.
Around the same time when improved access to HIV medication in local community pharmacies commenced in NSW, more PLHIV than ever exercised their choice to pick up their HIV medication at a time and place convenient, at no cost.
In late 2016, Positive Life took the position that 100 per cent of people diagnosed with HIV be offered treatment immediately.