Come Out Fighting – download here!

On Wednesday, April 26th, we launched our new zine Come Out Fighting at Pantibar in Dublin. The zine was created by Butcher Queers and Masc. for ACT UP Dublin and features work from writers, activists, photographers and artists.

It was a fun evening, fantastic for everyone involved in creating the zine to get a chance to meet each other in person. We gave away dozens of copies and had a lot of lively conversations about the zine and what ACT UP is doing.

We think there’s something special about holding an actual paper copy of a zine in your hands, but we also want to make sure people who weren’t able to get a copy have a chance to read the zine. So we’ve put the whole thing online. Click here to view or download a copy.

If you’d like to contribute to our next issue, please get in touch! You can reach us through our Facebook page, or directly by email at act.up.dublin@gmail.com.

Undetectable = Untransmittable

Have you noticed the hashtag  #UequalsU? Wondered what it means? Well it’s pretty simple, it stands for “undetectable = untransmittable” and this is what it means:

People living with HIV who have an undetectable viral load do not transmit HIV to their sexual partners.

Did you know that? Did you know that if you have HIV and are on treatment and virally suppressed, it doesn’t just reduce the risk that HIV can be transmitted, it effectively eliminates it?

Well it’s true. Results from the PARTNER study published last year showed that among 888 mixed-status couples (one parter was HIV positive, the other HIV negative) who reported more than 58,000 individual acts of condomless sex, there was not one instance of transmission from someone with an undetectable viral load to a negative partner.

These decisive results—added to finding from previous studies, as well as 20+ years of real-world experience with effective combination therapy for HIV—are about as conclusive as they can be. That’s why we’re comfortable saying that people with an undetectable viral load pose no transmission risk to their sexual partners.

In February, ACT UP Dublin became a community partner with the Prevention Access Campaign. That means we’ve joined dozens of researchers, organisations and individuals who’ve also endorsed the U=U Consensus Statement.

We think it’s a message that everyone who’s living with HIV deserves to hear loud and clear. We are committed to sharing this incredibly important information as widely and as often as we can.