WONDERFUL NEW THREE PART SERIES ON HIV / AIDS FROM SKY.

EVERYONE should be interested in the history and development of the HIV / AIDS story – especially in the context of Covid – which can be managed and helped by the sane type of drugs that have turned HIV from being a terminal condition into a life long manageable condition.

HIV treatments have a role to play in addressing COVID and other viruses that will probably develop in the near and far future.

The new 3 part SKY series is called POSITIVE.

I have watched 2 of the 3 episodes and have been deeply touched by the film.

• Positive will premiere on Sky Documentaries and streaming service NOW on World AIDS Day, 1st December at 9pm.
• The Sky Original docu-series uses intimate testimony from some of the earliest HIV patients and real-life heroes to tell the tragedies and triumphs of Britain’s 40-year battle with HIV.  
• Positive tracks the recent social history of our country, from a nation mired in prejudice, intolerance and homophobia to a society that’s increasingly accepting of individuals’ sexual and gender choices. Through Positive, audiences will witness the making of modern Britain.
• Across the three-episode run, the series takes us from the first recorded UK case in 1981 right through to the present day where prevention methods such as PrEP, and treatment methods leading to an undetectable status, are widely available and accessible to all, helping to create a world with less stigma and fewer new HIV cases.
• The Sky Original documentary has been commissioned by Zai Bennett, Sky’s Managing Director of Content and Poppy Dixon, Director of Documentaries and Factual. The series is produced by the award-winning team at Arrow Pictures, where its Creative Director is John Smithson, the Executive Producer Lucie Ridout and the director Grace Chapman.

This is a very tragic and gripping story of 40 years of human suffering and great heroism on the part of many.

In the early 1980s I worked with a few young men dying of AIDS.

At that time there was a special ward for the condition in Belvoir Park Hospital in Belfast.

We all had to enter patients rooms in outfits like spacesuits. It was so scary and tragic.

I saw some lovely young people die very tragic deaths.

Thankfully there has been a total revolution in the treatment of HIV and now most patients with the condition live so long they die of things others die of – heart attacks, strokes, cancer etc.

DERMOT FARRELL’S RECENT LETTER TO DUBLIN PRIESTS.