December 1 is World AIDS Day. As a result of this, RFSL Stockholm, through Vice President Julle Bergenholtz and Health Officer Mats Christiansen, has written a debate article on how we want to see increased efforts regarding HIV prevention aimed at transgender people in Stockholm County Council. The debate article was published in SVT Opinion on December 1. You can read the full article below:
Today is World AIDS Day, a day to draw attention to a disease that has claimed millions of lives worldwide.
The disease arrived in Sweden in the early 1980s and was then popularly known as the 'gay plague', as this was the group that was most often infected.
The public's fear of being infected was high, and it was not uncommon to see articles in the media about how it was right for gay men to be affected simply because of their sexual orientation.
Much has happened since then.
Stigmat kring hiv och aids har minskat (även om den absolut fortfarande finns kvar i samhället) och kunskapen om hur sjukdomen sprids har ökat, enligt Folkhälsomyndigheten, vilket också har medfört att det har utvecklats många preventiva metoder för att undvika spridning av hiv-viruset i Stockholm.
Much of this has been made possible thanks to increased investment by Stockholm County Council, where RFSL Stockholm, among others, is doing a lot of work aimed at men who have sex with men.
However, there is one group in society where HIV and AIDS prevention measures are extremely rare: transgender people.
Internationally, transgender people are an extremely vulnerable group of individuals from the HIV/STDITS-point of view.
Enligt Folkhälsomyndigheten har 46 procent av alla transpersoner aldrig testat sig för hiv, vilket är en betydligt lägre siffra än de grupper dit hiv-preventivt arbete främst riktar sig till.
Transgender people also have lower levels of trust in the healthcare system than many other groups in society (see link above), making it difficult to target this group.
RFSL Youth has in PEGASUS-The report showed that LGBTQ youth who have sex for money are also a group with a low tendency to get tested for HIV and sexually transmitted diseases.
The report states that this group, where cisgender and transgender people were the groups most likely to have had sex for money, is very important to reach in terms of HIV prevention work, both in Stockholm and in Sweden.
RFSL Stockholm therefore sees a major challenge for Stockholm County Council in strengthening HIV and AIDS prevention work for transgender people.
We therefore urge the county council to allocate funds for method development and projects to identify the needs of trans people regarding HIV prevention.
For example, we believe that possible initiatives could be:
- To invest and earmark funds for this group, even if they are not part of the accepted means of gaining more knowledge about this group
- Enabling funds to work on safer sex information for transgender people
- Enabling funds to support transgender people who have sex for money
Strengthening transgender people's access to HIV prevention measures and attitudes towards the healthcare system are challenges that require both time and effort.
However, we are convinced that investing in transgender health will not only lead to a reduction in the spread of HIV, but also to an improved knowledge of how the general health work towards transgender people can be developed and shaped in the future.
