A campaign has been launched in Hackney, Camden, and Lambeth about support for people living with HIV.
Billboards have gone up as part of the Find Your Four campaign, aimed at people with HIV and wider society.
Janine McGregor Read lives in Hackney and works for the national organisation Positively UK. She is a supporter of the Find Your Four campaign, having worked with the HIV community as a peer navigator at Homerton Hospital – and having herself been diagnosed with HIV 30 years ago.
She explains: "It's about finding the four points that will help you to live well with HIV. It's about making it accessible and simple for people to take on board."
The campaign was funded by Gilead Sciences, an American pharmaceutical company, and developed with local HIV communities.
Janine said: "The campaign sought to work with people living with HIV from the initiation and right through. Peer support has been a movement in HIV communities from the earliest days and we have always demanded that we have involvement in creating the tools that are put out to improve our health and wellbeing."
London continues to have the highest rates of HIV in England, and Hackney has been found to have a "very high" number of diagnoses, at 7.2 per 1,000 people aged 15-59. The campaign aims to reduce the stigma surrounding HIV and to communicate that those on effective treatment cannot pass on the virus.
Janine said: "It's really important that people realise this is not the 1980s. HIV is now a long-term manageable condition and HIV still carries a stigma that is attached to those days when people were ashamed of it.
"It's important that people living in high prevalence areas are aware that it's an issue, but it's an important issue for everyone. Even if you're not living with it, it could be affecting your family member, your colleague, your friend. We all need to know more about how to live well with this."
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