Good day chaps. I hope you’re all keeping safe during this winter lockdown. I don’t know about you but I’m thrilled to see the vaccine rollout going so well and relish the day we can go out and get all steamy with one another again…. safely of course!
Today I’m covering the C4 hit drama that’s got everyone talking and sparked an essential conversation around the subject of HIV: It’s A Sin. If you’ve not seen it yet, firstly where have you been? And secondly, it’s a masterpiece.
The impact of C4’s It’s A Sin
The Terrence Higgins Trust reported they had a four-fold increase on a ‘normal’ National HIV Testing week from previous years, thanks to the ‘It’s A Sin’ effect – the trust ordered 10,000 more tests to cover the demand.
The drama follows the outbreak of the HIV and AIDS crisis, when it was a disease shrouded in mystery and that baffled the healthcare system and the public.
Fast forward to 2021
Today, life for HIV sufferers is a stark contrast to in the past. Thanks to education and campaigning efforts, the disease is no longer as stigmatised as it was in the past and sufferers are able to live longer and healthier lives.
Despite these significant advancements, there is still work to be done. The Terrence Higgins Trust also reported that only 1 in 5 adults in the U.K have ever been tested for HIV – between straight and gay people this figure corresponds to 16% and 58% respectively.
The pandemic: no obstacle to HIV testing
Although we’re still in lockdown, this doesn’t need to be an obstacle if you’re looking to have a HIV test. The NHS offer free HIV testing to everyone and in the case of walk-in tests, some clinics are able to give you the result on the same day – this is unlike the characters in It’s A Sin who had to wait three weeks for their results, as was the true case during the 1980s.
Home testing kits are so simple to use chaps, you may not even have to provide a pinprick blood sample – it can sometimes simply be a saliva sample that you send off to the NHS or a private clinic.
Thanks to progress in modern medicine, post-exposure prophylaxis (more commonly referred to as PEP) may stop the virus from attacking the body, if taken within 72 hours of being exposed. All the more reason for finding out your HIV status as soon as possible after having sex with a new partner, whether this was protected or unprotected.
Whilst many of us might not be getting out and about around the sheets as much as we’d like right now, remember that when restrictions lift, you’re not invincible to risk of contracting STIs like HIV. It might be easy to embrace newly-found freedom by throwing caution to the wind, but chaps, in the long-term it’s not worth getting ill for.
