The 1st of December marks World AIDS Day, an event created to fight against HIV, show support for people living with HIV and to commemorate those who died from an AIDS related illness. Since its detection in the 1980s, the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 40 million people have died from HIV/AIDS. Last year alone, the number of deaths worldwide was 650 thousand. In addition, 1.5 million people acquired HIV in the last year, with an estimated 38.4 million people living with the virus as of 2022, of which two thirds live in Africa. While HIV remains classified as an active pandemic by the WHO, with early detection and rapid treatment, people who are HIV positive now expect to live a long and healthy life. However, the stigmatisation of HIV remains a barrier to receiving this treatment, particularly among ethnic minority communities.
It is estimated that around 100 thousand people in the UK are currently living with HIV. Within this group, only 55 percent were white, with Black African citizens making up the second largest group of people living with HIV, sitting at 28 percent, or just under 30 thousand people. From the data provided by the National AIDS Trust, it is clear that there is an ethnic disparity regarding HIV prevalence. Despite this, ethnic minority communities in the UK regularly face additional challenges in accessing information about HIV as well as specialist treatment for the virus. In comparison to White patients, it was found that Black African patients were 30 percent less likely to be in care – defined as receiving regular clinical support every few months. Potentially because of this, Black African patients reported an 85 percent higher chance of a viral rebound after beginning HIV treatment, something which puts both the patient and their sexual partners at an increased risk from the virus. The report concluded that more information needed to be given to ethnic minority patients on the treatment and care facilities available for those living with HIV, to help reduce the transmission of the virus further.
Stigma surrounding HIV is still prevalent across the UK. This partially surrounds the transmission of HIV, with a lack of understanding of the ways HIV can spread limiting the medical care that can be given to HIV positive patients in some cases. However, the greatest impact of HIV stigma is to prevent people from testing for the disease in the first place, which denies people the ability to receive timely treatment to contain the virus. Stigma is also an issue for British African or British Caribbean men living with HIV. As HIV is still considered by many social groups to be a disease confined to gay men, people at risk of the virus from these ethnic groups are often reluctant to test for HIV, or reach of for treatment, fearing social isolation. Not telling family or friends for fear of ostracization forces many BAME people to suffer in silence, leading to negative mental health effects.
In the last decade the UK has taken positive steps to drastically reducing the transmission of HIV and ensuring those living with HIV can live full lives. However, BAME people face additional hurdles, which the UK government have promised to address in order to eliminate stigma and help all those living with HIV to get the treatment necessary to have an undetectable viral load, which is therefore untransmissible.