If all the tools to fi ght HIV were easily available in Ireland, then it’s likely the number of new cases would start to fall sharply – surely a win-win for everyone?

with Stephen Meyler

#ActUpDublin

#MarshaPJohnson

#SameSexAdoption

UNLEASH THE POWER!

That Ireland needs the Aids activist group ACT UP once again is a sad reflection of the failure to consign HIV and Aids to history. Despite one of the most effective grassroots-generated health campaigns in history, not to mention the development of some of the most sophisticated drugs ever, the disease is making a comeback, with 512 new cases last year in Ireland, almost half of them among men who have sex with men (MSM).

And yet, it could still be brought under control; the one-a-day pill that HIV-positive people take works so well that the virus often becomes undetectable and therefore untransmissible (hence ‘U=U’). Then there’s PrEP, which if used properly, hugely reduces the chances of HIV infection during unprotected sex. In the UK, the NHS in Scotland and Wales provides PrEP, while in October, English STI clinics started recruiting 10,000 eligible people as part of a large-scale study. Unsurprisingly perhaps, Northern Ireland has no state provision of PrEP drugs. Many people in the UK continue to do their own thing and buy PrEP drugs online for £40 or so a month, leaving them vulnerable to counterfeiters.