Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:14 pm on 14 June 2022.
May I thank the Minister for this statement? I'm also looking forward to seeing what kind of responses there are to the consultation that's now ongoing. This is very important and, on the face of it, it is the fruit of partnership working, as we should see happening in Wales, where different organisations who want to see us making ground in this area have been involved in its development. We were at risk, I think, of slipping back from trying to hit that target of having no more new cases of HIV in Wales by 2030. My party had suggested that we could be aiming even higher and looking at 2026, something that the Terrence Higgins Trust had welcomed. Even 2030 started to look out of our reach. But I hope that this report will bring us back on track, as it were, and that we will certainly be able to aim towards that target.
There are a number of elements of the work that will be done, or is being recommended, that are eye-catching to me, specifically the creation of Wales as a Fast Track Nation. Some good work has been done, led in Cardiff and Vale, and I do know that other parts of Wales, north Wales, for example, have been very keen to make progress with work of this kind. I wonder whether I could have more details from the Minister on the capacity that she wishes to see built for implementing this Fast Track Nation ambition. The hope, I know, in north Wales was that there would be resources available to ensure that there was an individual who could lead this work, who would be employed to push the boundaries of what can be delivered in north Wales. I wonder whether there's any more meat on the bone in terms of the kind of resources that we could expect to see and how those resources could be used on the ground.
I will briefly cover the issue of stigma. I'm pleased to see such an emphasis placed on the need to tackle stigma. We know how much of a problem this was back in the 1980s, as was demonstrated by that excellent series It's A Sin, and it's shocking to think of the stigma that existed then. But that stigma is still there, I see it with my work on the cross-party group on infected blood, where those who are HIV positive still experience stigma. So, I welcome that commitment.
I will draw the Minister's attention to some research that's been done recently on stigma even for those people who take PrEP. Now, can I have an assurance that tackling stigma will go back even to that point so that people who do take PrEP don't need to be concerned that they will experience stigma for trying to prevent HIV infection in the first place?
And one very specific question—and forgive me if the answer is in the report, I haven't had an opportunity to go through it in detail as of yet—PrEP has been available through sexual health clinics, and there have been calls for ensuring that it is available through community pharmacy, for example, and that, in a way, would be a means of tackling stigma, because it's possible that some people wouldn't want to go to sexual health clinics in order to access this treatment. So, I wonder whether there is a change of direction in terms of policy in that regard so that it can be accessed more easily.