2023 was the most eventful year for Fast Track in Wales since we started to pester the Health Minister (then, Vaughan Gething) back in late 2019 about this bright idea some Welsh clinicians had had about a coalition to end HIV. Even back then, he wanted Fast Track Wales but we felt we needed to work from the ground up to show proof of concept.
The past few years
Since then, we’ve had the Welsh election (with its manifesto promise to us from both Plaid and Labour), the groundbreaking Public Health Wales postal testing platform (thank you Zoe), the Covid pandemic, three Wales HIV Testing Weeks (thank you Alessandro and to the support of PHW Comms Team), the Wales HIV Advocacy Network, the Texting 4 Testing project with GPs in Cardiff (thank you Dave, Darren and Simon), the Wales HIV Action Plan, and now a national network, Fast Track Cymru, with active coalitions in Cardiff & Vale, Newport, North Wales and (teetering on the brink of signing) Swansea Bay. And more to follow in talks with us.
It may have taken four years to get to Fast Track Cymru but you can’t say we haven’t been busy in the meantime.
From 2023 to 2024: our work in Wales
We now have funding from the Welsh Government, initially until March 2025, to work across Wales (thank you, Minister and Sexual Health policy officials). We have a Cardiff office thanks to our parent charity Pride Cymru (meeting and training room available for hire too). With project funding from Gilead Sciences and Viiv Healthcare, we’ve created pilots adopted by the HIV Action Plan. There’s a national research network forming (thanks Adam & co), training modules being prepped, a stigma campaign to be created in 2024.
None of this would have been possible without a lot of hard work from volunteers – some of them already working day jobs in health and HIV but putting in extra hours on top for something they believe in. Some of them from affected communities, or living with HIV, or just concerned citizens who saw that something could be done. People from across Wales with a lot of patience as we built towards becoming national. People who just want to see the end of new diagnoses of HIV in Wales and a stop to the stigma that has dogged people with this virus for the past 40 years.
So as we enter the new year, please raise a glass to all the lovely, persistent people who collaborated on all the activities shown in this website and this endeavour to make life better for people across Wales with HIV, at risk of HIV, needing to test for HIV or just wanting to see an end to it.
The Fast Track Cymru network:
Would you like to join them? If you want to get stuck in, the Development Workers currently assigned to support Fast Tracks are as follows:
- Fast Track Newport: Alex Porter – fasttracknewport@hiv.wales
- Fast Track Cardiff & Vale: Alex Porter – fasttrackcardiffvale@fasttrackcymru
- Fast Track Swansea: Sarah Maslen – fasttrackswansea@hiv.wales
- Fast Track North Wales: Patsy Hudson – fasttracknorthwales@hiv.wales
And for anywhere else: Lisa Power – fasttrackcities@hiv.wales or Hana Owens advocacy@hiv.wales
And if you want to know more about our work in 2023, we have a quarterly bulletin, which you can read online or sign up to receive regularly.
Fast Track Cymru 