A Big Thank You
Hello Daren and All your Colleagues,
Thank you so much for saving Positive Nation. You have saved the Nation.
Well Done!
Wonderful News to hear that PN will be back under Sugar Media! WELL DONE!
Many thanks,
Marie Hall
Business Manager, Begin (Learning and Living with HIV)
Moving on...
We were all angry and dismayed this summer over the closure of Positive Nation Magazine.
Everyone was asking why such a vital source of information and support for people living with HIV and Aids was forced to close?
Because it is clearly needed not only by the growing HIV positive population in this country (now estimated to be over 70,000 and growing by 7,500 new infections each year) but also for the wider HIV community around the world. The fact that the number of people living with the virus in Britain has doubled over the last six years means the need for Positive Nation is now ever.
When the Department of Health (DH) refused to put any money in to save Positive nation, I seriously lost my cool. I ranted to a senior Labour MP that we had made Caroline Flint MP, the last Public Health minister, look like a babe on the cover of the magazine. And I’d made her seem like some New Labour saint. So much so that the Tory MPs were her when she subsequently entered the Commons chamber. And that’s how she repaid us?
When Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair, he moved her on to another job and we’ve now got yet another minister dealing with HIV and sexual health - is that 10 in 10 years?
And that leads me on to the ‘Yes Minister’ civil servants at the DH who have consistently underinvested in fighting HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) for over ten years.
As the rates of new HIV and STI infections go through the roof, the queues outside our GUM clinics get longer and more vital NHS staff in HIV lose their jobs.
And sorry Minister, but HIV prevention is clearly not working in this country if the rates of new cases just keep on growing while there is less and less support for people living with this deadly disease.
We’re an odd community and a peculiar alliance of people living with HIV. Who would have thought that gay men and Christian Africans could ever be fighting on the same side?
But fight together we do, not just for those in this country, but also for the 40 million plus with the disease around the world.
Why must 3 million each year die from a disease which is not only preventable but also treatable, if not curable?
So that’s why this magazine has to live on. As the conscience and support for all the diverse population of people living with HIV.
Because we’ve got this virus for life. And because we’ve got to fight together to survive. So get involved in this new reborn magazine. Because we are the Positive Nation!
Martin Flynn
Send your letters to the Editor, editor@positivenation.co.uk.
