LONDON, GREAT BRITAIN – Approximately 113,500 people are living with HIV in the UK, and – in many ways – existing HIV services here suffice – e.g. HIV testing, and HIV treatment and care services are free.
And yet, according to Taofique Folarin, founder and director of community-based organization TAF Collective CIC, there are still issues, many of them revolving around inequality.
“There’s always exclusion in some spaces of representation. Lack of visibility, lack of culturally competent solutions to healthcare… Some people are still facing barriers, and disparities still exist. It takes community, togetherness… to just continue taking action,” Folarin said.
In UK, it is estimated that over 5,000 people in the UK live with undiagnosed HIV, and so they do not access antiretroviral medicines, and could potentially infect others. Disparity in services exacerbate the problem – e.g. pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP isn’t easily accessible to Black people, so that perhaps not surprisingly, 54% of the new HIV diagnoses are among Black men and women here.
Also, 2 in 5 new HIV diagnoses are among ethnic minority gay and bisexual men.
The mainstream LGBTQIA+ community, of course, continues to have a tricky relationship with the HIV community, seeing it as one that needs to be served, and yet among those that the LGBTQIA+ community itself discriminates against.
Which is why London-based TAF Collective CIC provided/provides space “to gather to tackle their issues the way they, themselves, see fit.”
For Folarin, the community also needs to step up, which is relevant because communities that experience discrimination can also be exclusivist and can also discriminate.
“You get moments in time where people as individuals say, ‘Okay, I can actually take a part, I can do something here.’ And that’s when we come together as a collective, where the real power is,” Folarin said.
In the end, for as long as there are sectors within the LGBTQIA+ community that feel excluded, then the push for equality is really still not achieved. And – as TAF Collective CIC is showing – the intent is to keep highlighting this, while coming up with efforts to deal with them in whatever form these may be.
