NO SHAME, NO BLAME. JUST DITCH THE BAGGAGE

or any other company would want people to take treatments before they needed it. But I think you also need to tailor treatments to the individual and not force them on anyone.

“I have to be realistic and I may have to start treatment again but one of the good things is that the drugs are much better these days - and I now know where all the decent toilets are in the West End!
“There’s a lot of baggage that comes with being HIV positive especially if you’re a gay man. You grow up in a hostile environment and you can carry baggage with you for the rest of your life unless you deal with it. Then HIV comes along as well and there’s all the stigma and shame and these things are a big killer. You expend so much subconscious energy carrying all this around and that’s the energy you could be spending on staying well and fighting the virus.
“I wish I could say that I eat well and go to the gym all the time and look after myself but I’m a regular gay man and I just get on with life and try not to worry too much.
“If I had one important take-home message for your readers, it’s ‘try and take a step back and take a good look at life and if there’s things you don’t like, change them’. I could spend a lot of time looking back and regretting but there’s not a lot I can do about it now.
“Now I enjoy what I think is the best job in the world. I go home at night and know I’m doing something useful.
“I don’t claim we can save the world. There’s 50 million people in the world iving with HIV and our

programmes only touch a fraction of these. But that’s still hundreds of thousands who wouldn’t be reached otherwise. And if our programmes work, we can then encourage the big donors like governments and the Global Fund to do a lot more.”
For details of GlaxoSmithKline’s ‘Positive Action’ community programmes, visit: www.gsk.com/community

The glitzy new HQ of Britain’s 2nd largest company, GSK - in Brentford - also home to Positive Action which Richard South heads