U = U (Undetectable = Untransmissable) information leaflet designed to raise awareness that if HIV-positive people achieve and maintain a sustained undetectable viral load by taking daily ART medication, they cannot pass the virus on through sexual activity. Leaflet cover depicts a black and white photograph of half the face of one person in focus, and the face and torso of another person out of focus, with black lettering.
Inscription
Undectable=Untransmittable / U=U / [SX logo] Sex Health Wellbeing / For Gay & Bisexual Men
Production date
2016-2019
Production place
edinburgh
Production organisations
SX Waverly Care
Associated organisations
Yorkshire MESMAC
Associated place
leeds
Labels
The U = U campaign draws data from several extensive studies, most notably Partner and Partner 2, and is further supported by the Opposites Attract study. These monitored tens of thousands of sexual acts between heterosexual and homosexual couples where one partner was HIV-positive but had an undetectable viral load. They found zero instances of the disease being transmitted to the HIV-negative partner.
In October 2022, two members of Leeds Skyline HIV support service, Mike and Andi, sat down with museum staff to disucss the ongoing stigma around HIV and the lack of public awareness of the fact that HIV cannot be passed on by someone with a consistently undetectable viral load. The full transcript and recording are attached as Digital Assets, but the most relevant comments to this leaflet are provided below.
Andi: I was at a conference in London a few months ago and they were talking about the whole U=U thing and whether it’s a very… sort of cliquey thing. If you work in HIV services or you’re HIV positive you’re aware of it, but if you step aside of that and you go to somebody “I’m undetectable” and they go “What? What are you talking about?”… How do you rephrase that as a new message?
Mike: I think they did a small snippet on the news a few months ago, didn’t they – just one little bit about it. And that was it; it was forgotten, never mentioned ever again.
Andi: There’s never been a massive [public awareness campaign about U=U]…. Like there was the whole mailout to the entire country with the leaflets in the 90s and 80s, and there’s never been a similar one going “Look”, you know, so everybody’s knowledge is stuck there.
Mike: People are still stuck here with the tombstones.
Andi: This year I remember… I think one of my colleagues had been talking to a client and mentioned U=U, and they’d been [HIV] positive for eleven or twelve years and hadn’t heard of it. So… I think sometimes the clinic assumes that message is out to everybody. [But] You know, clinicians come and go, people move around…."
