WA Health Minister Roger Cook said safe-sex practices had been so well promoted and accepted within the gay community that he was not surprised by the falling HIV numbers. "You don't want to live with what we've lived with, we're well and healthy now, but I wish I didn't have this HIV shadow lurking in the background, I wouldn't wish it on anyone." Gay community setting the example "But now there's no reason not to get tested because it's just so easy … it's more or less anonymous and people are compassionate, and don't look down their nose at you, you're not shunned." "We thought AIDS was all in New York or it was all in America and it was hard to get a test and you were scared of your privacy and those sorts of things.
Steve Walker was one of the first Western Australians diagnosed with HIV. "They are not getting picked up early, they're taking some time before their HIV is diagnosed," he said.Īs a result, men in that category were likely to become more severely ill before they received any treatment and were also likely to unknowingly spread the virus to others. The director of WA's Communicable Disease Control, Paul Armstrong, said it was particularly concerning because middle-aged straight men were less likely to have regular STI tests and were less likely to seek medical attention even if they became unwell. "HIV is not a common problem in Western Australia or Australia anymore … so it's probably not a top of mind consideration but when travelling you need to be aware of the risks." Getting sicker and infecting others "These are middle-aged men, anywhere from their late 30s through to their middle-age, to older men, who have sexual partners overseas, who don't practice safe sex, they may even have partners they are returning to regularly and don't see the need for using condoms. Lisa Bastian says the campaign's target audience are a tough one to reach.