Dua Lipa on the importance of using PrEP: “I think there is a lot of stigma around [HIV/STDs] & I think if we can de-stigmatize what it means to get the right healthcare for HIV… I want to believe that there’s hope that it can be completely eradicated. I think sex should be fun & it should be safe.”

Dua Lipa is so intelligent and articulate and I just love her so much! Sex should be fun and safe! If we remove the stigma surrounding HIV, maybe one day it will be eradicated.

So this is probably a weird thing to bring up but there’s a show in the UK called EastEnders (as a London girl Dua would have watched it at one point lol) that has touched on the HIV issue a couple of times over the last 30 years and both times did so to highlight the stigma attached to it still.

The first time was a character called Mark Fowler having it in the early 90’s and when his dad found out about it he would clean things with bleach thinking it was contagious, and later when the rest of the community found out he was barred from the pub because the landlady assumed he could spread it via drinking out of a glass.

The second time was more recent, a character called Zack got it from sharing needles from anabolic steroids and when everyone found out a lot of the older people had the same outdated views about catching it whereas the teenagers in the community scolded their parents for their behaviour.

Weirdly my education on HIV has come from watching a soap lol, not all of it obviously but the foundation of it has been from that show.

Like up until Zack got it I didn’t even know that modern medicine had gotten HIV to such a point where it can become undetectable in people who have it and they aren’t likely to pass it on to partners or children.

So yeah, Dua Lipa doing this is amazing and people should pay attention. It doesn’t matter who you learn the information from for as long as you’re getting it and it’s accurate too.