A candle-lit church vigil honoured the memories of people who lost their lives to AIDS.
People gathered at Liverpool Parish Church today, December 1, to commemorate World AIDS Day, a national event to remember those who have died from HIV-related illnesses, and to encourage love and support for people living with the virus today.
The vigil was organised by Liverpool LGBTQ+ charity Sahir House in its first in-person WAD event since 2019, as part of its wider campaign to "End Complacency, End Stigma, End Inequalities, End AIDs".
READ MORE: Liverpool's oldest LGBT+ charity gets £150k boost after losing funding to Manchester
Speaking at the event, Sahir House CEO Ant Hopkinson said: "This year hasn't been an easy one for our community and I think it's fair to say Sahir House as a charity has been subject to change and upheaval. That being said, we are here to stay and I want to reaffirm our commitment as a charity to helping towards the end of HIV transmissions in Liverpool within a generation, and supporting those living with HIV regardless of gender or sexuality.
"Sahir House has been in operation since 1985, we are very much rooted in the community we serve and we are here to stay."
Around 106,890 people in the UK are currently living with HIV, including 9,750 in the North West. People diagnosed with HIV can expect to live a normal life span with proper medical treatment, which can reduce the viral load (the amount of HIV in the blood) enough to be undetectable.
People with undetectable viral loads cannot pass on the virus. A landmark 2016 study of 58,000 couples made up of one HIV+ person and one HIV negative person found that, when the HIV+ partner was on effective treatment, there were zero cases of HIV transmission.
The Revd Canon Dr Crispin Pailing said: "I remember in the 1980s, the leaflets dropping through the door with that great campaign, the likes of which seem unbelievable now, and let's hope no one designs a marketing campaign like that again.
"By the late 1980s I remember a friend being diagnosed with HIV and the shock that he was facing at that point, and what he thought that meant for his life. Ten years later I was a parish priest in Birmingham and I had at least two members of my congregation who were HIV+, one of whom was the first HIV+ woman in Birmingham to give birth, and her son wasn't positive. What that showed was the normalisation of HIV, that it's something we as a community can live with in a different way.
"We'll always remember those who you have known who have gone, and who are still in your hearts. We also have, at this vigil, hope. I feel I witnessed a normalisation that was from people living with HIV and not dying from it. We can all give thanks for the way medical research has made huge progress, but also the way stigma and discrimination has been overcome in so many ways.
"But you know as well as I do that it's still there, and the third thing we must look at is action.
"This action is about ending the complacency that comes with normalisation. It's about ending the stigma that still affects people, and ending inequalities. We need to ensure that ending AIDS remains paramount, we mustn't be complacent. Through education, acceptance, inclusion, we can ensure that people behave safely and responsibly with each other, and we can make a significant difference for the next generation to come."
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