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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-10-17 Daily Xml
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POSITIVE LIFE SA

The Hon. S.W. KEY (Ashford) (15:11): One of the quiet achiever organisations in Ashford is Positive Life SA. Although I am waiting on the most recent figures, in 2012, 406 of the 634 people who are known to be HIV positive in South Australia have been using the service. Unfortunately, 350 of the known HIV positive people in our community, or 86 per cent of these people, are known to be on low incomes and eligible for a health care card.

I was impressed to hear that in 2011-12 Positive Life SA provided over 7,000, what they call, episodes of service, including 2,132 visits to the actual centre itself and associated activities. They provided cheap lunches to 1,720 HIV positive people in the community. They have a shop at the centre and they claim that 1,356 'shops' were made by at least 137 people in the community.

The sad point that was made—I was a little bit surprised to see this store in the Positive Life centre—is that in some cases people need to choose between, I am told, food or medicine. The sad fact is that, particularly when you look at the low income that the number of people who are HIV positive in our community have, they need some support to actually buy food and different things that are needed to run a household.

There is also another scheme that I had not known about called the Red Ribbon Fund where ambulance subscriptions for low income people are provided. In the last year, 105 of those were provided through Positive Life SA. They conduct a number of training workshops for community workers, health workers, medical students and particular groups, including new arrival groups (new arrivals as in people who come to South Australia). They have specific multicultural training workshops and workshops for people of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds.

There were 120 individual information, support, advocacy and/or referral sessions. I am also advised that the centre provided many rural services, both on an individual basis, particularly for people who had reported as being HIV positive, and also holding weekend treatment workshops. Again, training programs were made available to rural workers in health and community services and also some medical students.

There have been a number of different HIV treatment forums, and also activities like Pos Day Out family events, where the friends and family who surround people who are HIV positive get an opportunity to be involved in programs, and there have been many research programs that they were telling me about.

Part of the work, of course, of being the sort of organisation that they are, and with the sad closure of our AIDS Council in South Australia, is that Positive Life SA is being called on more and more to provide information to different panels, forums, reference groups and other organisations; so it is flat out. Although I know that the AIDS Council work has been taken up by other organisations, this has put an extra burden on Positive Life SA.

One of the things that I think we need to be reminded about, with regard to this organisation and other organisations, is that treatment as prevention reduces the cost to South Australians in this area. I am told that HIV treatment reduces the infectiousness of someone with HIV, and then also can reduce the risk of transmission. Each new HIV diagnosis costs the public health system around $1 million over time. It is obviously a very needed treatment, but it is also a very expensive one on the public purse. And HIV treatment sooner rather than later reduces the risk of other diseases and problems.

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