Yesterday we hit the road again with our driver Izzy to start the first day of the tour in Aberdeen. It was a brilliant start to the tour and everything went perfectly. Thank you to all the Aberdeen students who helped to make the event so great and a special thanks to Stop AIDS president Azam who organised the event and who hosted us last night.
Everybody was super enthusiastic and we had some great insightful questions after the speeches. One of the most interesting was a question for Nick, our speaker from Glasgow who was asked whether he thought that free healthcare and better access to medication was leading to a more relaxed attitude towards HIV prevention in the UK. He replied that he believed it was, although this was mainly due to both complacency and a lack of education about the facts of HIV. Whilst most people know what HIV is, very few young people are getting tested regularly and most would not know what to do if they or a friend tested positive. If we are to reduce infection rates and eliminate stigma by TALKING about HIV and by coming to events like the speaker tour. The more people hear about the AIDS crisis, the harder it is to ignore. We are lucky to have free healthcare in this country, but this doesn’t mean that the HIV pandemic is over – there is still so much more to do.
Some food for thought there!
We’ll be updating you on the progress of the tour as we go and if you have any
questions, you can always send us an email at Florence@restlessdevelopment.org /saoirse@restlessdevelopment.org or contact us on Facebook or twitter
