World AIDS Day: How Science Transformed HIV into a Treatable and Preventable State

In just half a lifetime, modern science has transformed HIV, one of the most dreadful diseases in human history, into a treatable and preventable state.

It’s a medical wonder that HIV-positive Ruan Uys is remembered every day.

“Without people who became HIV positive in the 1980s, I wouldn’t have taken just one pill a day here,” Luang said.

“They lined up their bodies. They tried a new drug. Blood, sweat and tears were poured on me so that I could be here today.”

He was born in 1981 – the same year the virus began to spread rapidly.

He was diagnosed with HIV in 2014.

By then, treatment options were quite advanced, but the moment he learned of his condition, he was hit hard.

“The memory of the ads of the dying people was really imprinted in my heart. When I was diagnosed, I didn’t know about a cure. I thought,” Is this the end? ” He said.

Program Coordinator of the Bobby Goldsmith Foundation HIVsters, He said he felt a lot of internalized shame.

“I had a lot of inner shame and stigma that I had in myself.

“I wasn’t educated. I was trying to get away from everyone because I always come out with my friends or say something and I have to deal with it.”

That is the trauma that John Rule understands. He was diagnosed with HIV in 1996.

“I think it’s a common experience for people diagnosed with HIV to have a traumatic response to that diagnosis,” said Rule, senior research manager at the National Association of People Living with HIV in Australia. Told.

“People who are currently diagnosed should be relieved that the treatment is successful and that they can live longer.

“I can think of a group of six friends, and I’m the only one who survived that group, so it’s a bit heavy to carry around.”

When a young gay man begins to die of a mysterious illness

It has been 40 years since AIDS was first identified as a disease.

In June 1981, a young gay man in California and New York suddenly began to die of what appeared to be a mysterious case of pneumonia and rare skin cancer.

It will take years before the relationship between HIV and AIDS is fully understood.

However, by the time HIV was first confirmed in the United States, the disease had arrived in Australia undetected.

At that time, the homosexual rights movement in the country was becoming more mainstream.

The demand for equality and freedom from discrimination has advanced from the early pioneers of LGBTQI visibility.

Actor and dancer Robert Helpmann became the first openly gay Australian of the Year in 1966.

In 1969, Marion Paul and Claudia Pierce established the country’s first LGBTQI rights organization.

A frank Tasmanian doctor, conservationist, and upcoming Senator Bob Brown appeared in an interview on ABC Television in 1976.

Protests ranged from stubborn to horrifying.

A group of Sydney activists celebrated the Day of International Homosexual Solidarity by performing what is called “Mardi Gras” in 1978.

They were brutal, named, and embarrassed by taking them down the street.

Richard Jessop demonstrated outside a doctor’s surgery that misrepresented a homosexual “cure”.

Jessop provided a slice of sheep’s brain to passers-by.

HIV has held on to their soaring spirit, as the next generation of LGBTQI rights activists have joined the battle.

People, especially gay men at first, died suddenly. Social conservatives have mercilessly declared it a sign of punishment from God and nature.

“At that time, many people committed suicide instead of living with a diagnosis of HIV,” Ruhr said.

The trauma that rejuvenated the gay community in the 80’s and 90’s was that of other people living with HIV: women, heterosexual men, trance and indigenous people, drug users, sex workers, and other major comorbidities. someone.

“Gay men had a bigger impact on us at first, so we had to get more education,” he says.

John says it took a long time to get people to understand that HIV isn’t just a “gay illness.”

“Positive heterosexuals, women, people with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders backgrounds, or other groups. They need their own space and their own network and have the opportunity to explain their experiences. I need an opportunity. “

The importance of trust

Much of Australia’s current COVID-19 test and trace expertise was built on the system originally created to find and isolate the chain of HIV infection, especially in New South Wales.

Professor Bill Bowtell is a health policy consultant who was one of Australia’s early designers for HIV / AIDS.

“Unlike COVID, which quickly became apparent that you had it, this can sometimes last for months or even years,” said Professor Boutel.

“You weren’t the only one with you last week or last month, but who were you with for the entire period you could have been infected?”

“The question was, could we prevent it by changing our behavior?”

“The answer was to be decided soon. Yes, you can.

“But it causes gay men to change sexual behavior, use condoms, inject drug users with clean needles and syringes, sex workers insist that clients wear condoms, and significantly improve hygiene. Meaning to take a series of measures designed to improve the relationship with blood transfusions, dentists, doctors, and reusable devices.

“People had to have confidence. They wouldn’t speak frankly and honestly if they believed that the information was misused, passed to the police, or somehow involved in fines or trouble. was.”

Difficult to identify origin

Like COVID-19, it is difficult to determine the exact origin of HIV. It may have existed in Chimpanzees in Central Africa dating back to the early 20th century.

Like Ebola and SARS, human HIV appears to have been caused by unsafe consumption of wild bushmeat.

Scientific models suggest that it was confined primarily to Central Africa until urbanization and large-scale human movements pushed it around the world.

Why is it so difficult to cure a viral infection?

Since then, more than 30 million people have died and remain a major public health threat in many parts of the world, including Papua New Guinea and sub-Saharan Africa.

It is fashionable that UNAIDS, the UN’s HIV / AIDS program, is ambitious to finish by 2030.

However, UNAIDS director Winnie Byanima said there was a lot of confusion with COVID-19.

“The number of people who pick up preventive tools such as condoms and PrEP has decreased, and the number of people who move forward for testing has increased. [Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis] It’s decreasing. “

“This is the time to warn the world that AIDS is still a pandemic.

“No one should be newly infected and no one should die. But there is an accumulation of technology and know-how, which is why it is lacking.

“In Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were diagnosed 1.3 to 1.9 times more likely than non-Australian indigenous peoples.

“Race, sexuality, sexual orientation, as well as illiteracy, education, unequal educational standards, and economic inequality are all gathered together.”

According to the latest data for 2019, about 30,000 people live with HIV in Australia.

Navigating the disclosure of their positive status is a delicate effort in the workplace, friendship, family, and intimate relationships.

Rule said that despite the burden of outdated stigma, many are or may be quietly prospering.

“If you live with HIV and are on antiretroviral therapy, sexual activity cannot infect others with HIV. It’s a game changer,” he said.

“We are now discussing quality of life in the community,” says Ruan Uys.

“I have something to do with people who are HIV negative and he forgets that I am positive until I jokingly.