AIDSfree appeal: ‘I didn’t think I would live to 40, but I am going to be 70 next year’

“Like Lazarus”: Jonathan Blake, one of the first people diagnosed with HIV in London, started taking drugs for it in the Nineties
Fraser Wilson, Terrence Higgins Trust
Anna Davis @_annadavis21 December 2018

One of the first people to be diagnosed with HIV in London has echoed Michelle Obama’s call for an AIDSfree future.

Jonathan Blake, 69, said he felt like a “modern day leper” before attitudes towards the virus changed.

He was diagnosed in 1982 with HTLV3, later renamed HIV. There was no treatment available and he developed Aids in 1989 and was given months to live.

But Mr Blake started on combination therapy in the Nineties, and the virus is now undetectable in his blood. He feels so well he goes cold water swimming every day. His story was immortalised in the film Pride, in which he was played by Dominic West.

Dominic West portrayed Jonathan Blake in the movie Pride
Allstar/BBC FILMS

Mr Blake, of Brixton, said: “When I was diagnosed it was incurable. There was nothing for it — it was a terminal diagnosis. I was 33, and older than a lot of people who were diagnosed. There were so many young people who died because there was no treatment.”

On how people with HIV are viewed, he said: “There has been an incredible change. Before, you were nervous about meeting people because of the fear you were going to infect someone else.

“Now we have reached the point where you can have an undetectable viral load and it is untransmittable. That is huge. The effect it has on your own psyche is that you no longer feel like the modern day leper. In the Eighties I felt unclean.

“The press was really vile about us, saying things like you brought it on yourselves and it was God’s judgment on us.

“I didn’t think I would live to 40, but I am going to be 70 next year.”

Mr Blake said he saw a huge change in his health after he started taking HIV medication. “The first week there was nothing, but by the fourth week I woke up one morning with such energy,” he said.

“It was seriously like Lazarus being raised from the dead. I felt so good I laid a patio outside my bedroom.”

But Mr Blake said he is fortunate because his life is not chaotic so he can take his medication properly.

He added: “There is still no cure for it. Provided I take my medication it’s fine, but if I was to stop there would be problems.

“There are people who do have chaotic lifestyles for whatever reason and are not good at taking pills.”

He said watching Pride was “amazing”.

The film follows a group of lesbian and gay activists who raised money to help families affected by the miners’ strike.

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