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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-03-19 Daily Xml
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HIV

The Hon. S.W. KEY (Ashford) (15:37): I had the opportunity and pleasure of being able to assist in the launch of a report entitled 'Identity and secrecy'. As members would probably know, the United Nations theme for this year is 'Let's not wait another 20 years for gender equality' and focuses on issues facing women which were raised at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. Twelve elements of action were raised at that Beijing platform forum.

Many of these elements directly relate to issues for women living with HIV in Australia and South Australia, including African born and Asian born woman. The full title of the report launched is 'Identity and secrecy: the experience of African and Asian women living with HIV in South Australia'. I was surprised to find that this is the first study of its kind in Australia, focusing on the experiences and needs of women with HIV, mainly from countries with a high prevalence of HIV and AIDS.

It was jointly undertaken by the HIV Women's Program and Positive Life SA. I am proud to say they are in the electorate of Ashford and located very close to the Glandore Community Centre. Originally, the workers on this particular report were going to hold forums and consult with women on their experience in life. As they found out, this was not something that the HIV woman were prepared to do, and the strategy changed to having individual interviews with the researchers to talk about their experiences and views.

Most of the HIV positive women who identified themselves in South Australia for this report did not want to be stigmatised or isolated, particularly in their own communities, because they had come out, so to speak, and identified themselves as being HIV positive.

I am told the report represents a variety of African-born and Asian-born women living in South Australia aged between 20 and 50 years. Most of them had lived in Australia for one to five years and had been recently diagnosed within the last two years. Interestingly, most were women married to Australian men. Only one of the participants had entered Australia on a humanitarian visa.

Also speaking at the launch were Jodi Matthews, Brand General Manager of MAC AIDS Fund—and I will talk about her in a moment—and Katherine Leane, an ex-peer support officer for the previously funded women's HIV program.

I think members will be interested to know that women make up an estimated 9 per cent of the approximately 21,000 people living in Australia diagnosed with HIV. The number of women living with HIV in Australia has risen substantially in recent times. For most of the women, the HIV infection has resulted from heterosexual sex, and it is estimated that there is about 170 women with HIV in South Australia. Between 2012 and 2014, 45 new cases were identified. Of those 45, 10 were born in Australia, 20 were born in Africa and 10 were born in Asia.

I mentioned earlier that MAC appeared at the launch. I thought MAC was possibly Migrant Advisory Committee or the Motor Accident Commission—I was not entirely sure what MAC meant. I found out that MAC was, in fact, the cosmetics company that has raised billions of dollars around the world to support different HIV and AIDS programs and has done that for a number of years. Most recently in South Australia it has supported Positive Life SA to make sure that their programs are supported with finances and resources. I would like to make a special mention of MAC and the fact that they sell cosmetics and some of their lines directly fund these programs. I am not sure how many of us here wear lipstick and lip gloss but, for those of you who do, please check out that product.

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