Ms Deirdre Seery:

I am not a medical person and always have avoided medical details because I would not wish to give the wrong information. The virus attacks one's system, so a simple way to say this, because I am simple when it comes to science, is that as it attacks one system, one's viral load rises and one's CD4 count falls. When one's CD4 count gets to a certain level, one gets treatment. If it falls below that level, the treatment is not quite as effective and one may have developed symptoms. Some people are picked up and are diagnosed by the time they already have developed symptoms. The reason we must get people to test early is because the treatment is much more effective at that point. In respect of where people are born, 41% were born in Ireland and 50% were born abroad. We now have an international environment and it is important to reach out to all populations in Ireland in this regard.

As for one thing that could be done, I could list loads of things but were the national sexual health strategy to be launched, it would pull us together. A strategy sounds like an abstract thing and it has no targets and no timeframe but it is a high-level strategy. One could say it lacks teeth and while I acknowledge it does not have enough teeth, they will come at the implementation stage. We need to put people around the same table to discuss matters, as used to be done with HIV prevention. The national HIV committee no longer meets and is suspended while we wait for the national sexual health strategy committee to be set up. There are wonderful people in Ireland doing wonderful work and if we all gather around the same table to talk to one another, to communicate, to solve problems as they arise and to look at health intelligence-----