A message from Positive East on World AIDS Day.
This World AIDS Day, we celebrate the theme ‘Let Communities Lead’ and all that we have achieved as a community.
In June 1981, our community found ourselves at the centre of a global health crisis and a pandemic of unforeseeable proportions. A pandemic that was fuelled by rampant homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, racism, classism and stigma. This lethal mix meant our community began to mourn the loss of too many. Soon, we found ourselves at a clear and historic demarcation – what life was like before and after AIDS.
We realised our silence would not protect us and responded with courage and strength. We mobilised and created a community movement that remains unapparelled to this day. We established charities and events, built networks, made support groups, and started campaigns. The same hands we used to pull each other up were used to chain ourselves in protest to the doors of the powerful to demand a response.
43 years on, through our community-based actions, our victory over HIV is now within our reach. U=U (undetectable equals untransmittable) is a scientific statement of fact. PrEP is now available for free on the NHS, and new HIV diagnoses have fallen.
We must remain vigilant. Communities must continue to lead and be heard.
We can be the generation that ends HIV.
Please make a donation if you are able, and help support our efforts to end new HIV transmissions and tackle HIV stigma.
Please stand with us on World AIDS Day.
In solidarity,
Positive East
