A Sea of Candles Shine for HIV Victims
George House Trust has been helping people with HIV for 30 years, but they say there is still a stigma to the virus.
Hundreds of people gathered in Manchester's Gay Village to mark the end of the annual Pride Festival 2015 with a candle lit vigil. It was the culmination of the big weekend as the George House Trust Candlelit Vigil turned Sackville Gardens into a sea of flickering candles to remember those victims of the HIV virus.
Neil Sharp is from the Manchester based charity George House Trust who have been supporting people effected with HIV for 30 years. He told Key 103 that the stigma is still there and more work needs to be done to erradicate that stigma:
'There is still a lot of work to be done around the stigma associated with HIV. HIV stands out as a condition many people are afraid of, there is still fear and prejudice around HIV and at the vigil we will be communicating five facts that challenge that HIV stigma.'
'There are many people who have attended Manchester Pride who were born after the start of HIV and it's probably a different condition for them than it was to those who experienced HIV in the early years.'
'Prejudice, fear, stigma, some of those feelings and attitudes have not progressed far in the last 30 years at all. At the vigil, the Hope Theatre Company will be on stage with a short dramatisation of the calls we received in the early days of the epidemic.'