On 1 December we join our global community in marking World AIDS Day.
It’s a day for Australians to:
- show their support for people living with HIV
- raise awareness about prevention, treatment and care
- eliminate stigma and discrimination around HIV
- remember and honour the people we have lost to HIV.
In 2024 the global theme asks us to consider how we will help – to uphold human rights and support those who are marginalised or discriminated against. In Australia the national theme asks us to be proactive with It starts with me.
How can we help with this? Central to this are the themes of Inclusion. Respect. Equity. that were explored on World AIDS Day in 2023. As a community we are mindful of those among us living with HIV, of demonstrating our support for them and honouring lives lost over the past 40 plus years. Some people choose to wear a red ribbon on World AIDS Day as a way of showing their support.
HIV AND THE BLEEDING DISORDERS COMMUNITY
HIV has been part of our history and continues to be part of our community’s experience.
In the mid-1980s some adults and children with bleeding disorders acquired HIV from their plasma-derived clotting factor treatment products. Some lost their lives to HIV while others live with HIV today. Today treatment products are much safer: the risk of bloodborne infection from products manufactured from blood is extremely low. But HIV has had a profound effect not only the people with HIV, but also those close to them, their health professional carers and the bleeding disorders community generally.
In Australia people with bleeding disorders drew on the resilience that was already a strong feature and resolved to respond to HIV as a community, taking on effective advocacy around safer treatments and providing support.
Much has changed since HIV was first identified in the mid-1980s. Today in Australia people living with HIV can get medication that allows them to live a healthy, long life, suppressing their viral load so they have no risk of transmitting the infection to a sexual partner. There are also medications to prevent HIV infection if exposed to the virus.
What does Inclusion. Respect. Equity. mean to you?
For World AIDS Day last year, our community members Neil, Mike and Anth shared short reflections on these themes. We feel they are still relevant and meaningful and worth republishing. We share them again with their permission.
Neil
“I’ve been very open about my HIV status for years now and I’ve been humbled by the respect shown to me by everyone I’ve told. Being free to answer questions and break down any fears has only helped my inclusion in social circles.”
Mike
“When I see the word ‘inclusion’, I think of how the bleeding disorders community and the HTCs have come together to deal with HIV.
Haemophilia when I was growing up in the 1950s, 60s and 70s was life threatening and I required many treatments.
The 1980s was a catastrophic period. HIV caused a lot of devastation and worry to me and my wife personally. It also brought a lot of families together, and it was this support that helped us to survive this period in our lives where so much was unknown.
We were very fortunate to have great team of doctors, nurses and a psychologist who were very understanding and supportive, and we would not have survived this time without the tireless work from HFA.”
Anth
“For me, this year’s World AIDS Day themes provide a checklist of game-changing ideals in global efforts to a) eliminate HIV transmission, and b) care for people living with HIV. Without a sharp uptick in inclusion, respect and equity, the world’s poorest and least powerful communities will continue to be disproportionately affected.
But what do these words mean to our bleeding disorders community in Australia? Those of us who have lived with HIV for over 40 years, and those of us who have seen loved ones succumb? I often feel like our part in the story of HIV/AIDS gets forgotten. While the increasing dissociation of HIV/AIDS and bleeding disorders creates safety for us, it denies our truths and remarkable achievements too. Whether you mark World AIDS Day privately or publicly, or not at all, please know that you remain part of a community that is extraordinary for its resilience and dignity in the face of bloodborne viruses.”
READ MORE
Visit www.worldaidsday.org.au for more information about World AIDS Day in Australia.
