UK must take greater lead fighting prejudice that is costing lives

Norman Fowler speaks about impact of attitudes towards Aids

A few months ago I was sitting next to a well-known peer in the House of Lords. There had just been a question on HIV. “I don’t know what you are worried about,” he said. “No one dies from Aids any more.”

It was an example of the blanket of complacency that too often has settled over the whole area, and why I congratulate The Independent on its reports over the past weeks in challenging that complacency.

The latest figures show that, around the world, a million men, women and children died because of Aids in a year, and a further 1.8 million became infected with HIV.

It is true that in Britain the position has improved radically since the Eighties when I was health secretary. Then, we had no drugs to treat patients and one of our few weapons was to warn the public as dramatically as we could of the dangers.

Today antiretroviral drugs mean that anyone who has HIV should be able to live a long and successful life. But surely that makes the global death toll even worse? Surely it is the shame of the world that although we have had a medical revolution we lose a million lives a year?

Over the past few years I have travelled around the world trying to find out why this is so. In Russia HIV is spread by drug users sharing needles. But drug users are low on the list of official priorities and treatment is often woefully inadequate.

In African countries there is too often a strong antipathy to gay people, sometimes fanned by American evangelists.

In India transgender people are treated with contempt. Worst of all, in more than 70 countries homosexuality is illegal.

So what is the effect of this hostility? The sooner someone comes forward for testing the better their chances of survival if the test is positive. But what is the incentive if the result can be ostracism or prosecution?

The truth is that the world needs to tackle the prejudice that scars nation after nation. In my view the time has come for Britain to take a greater lead. Our experience shows how a country can develop from the dark days of Victorian repression to a position where, for example, equal marriage is the rule in almost every part of the country.

With ministerial and international support we can break down the prejudice that costs so many lives around the world.

Norman Fowler is the lord speaker in the House of Lords