National HIV Testing Week in the UK starts 21st November 2015. Get tested, get treatment, get BETTER!

When actor Charlie Sheen came out earlier this week to confess that he is HIV positive and had been for the last four years, whether it is because it’s Charlie Sheen who we all know to be an erratic hell raiser, or whether because the disease does not have the stigma it had a decade ago, it seems nobody lost sleep over it.

Promoting the ‘It Starts With Me‘ campaign and publicising free testing, the Terrence Higgins Trust in the UK is now making earlier and earlier testing possible in the UK, thereby increasing comfort and life expectancy for carriers of HIV.

While there is still no cure, treatment is better than ever, and the cells can be reduced to being nearly invisible such that transfer can be eliminated – even between mother and child.

Better still, the testing and treatment is FREE. Give yourself this chance. Please.

The Trust released some interesting statistics – stating that two-thirds (a staggering 37,700) of the HIV carriers in the UK are African, and of this number, a third are even unaware they have it.

This means that this ostrich behaviour (I rebuke and I bind/ it can’t happen to me/ we only did it once/ s(he) looks clean/ will s(he) still want me if I insist on protection?) is KILLING us!!! Literally. In a country where health checks and treatment is FREE.

Please do not ignore this. Get tested this week. Please.

I know I will.