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Hi. I'm Trudie with the New Zealand AIDS Foundation's Athena Centre over at Willis Street in Wellington. And we're here today doing free HIV and syphilis. Rapid testing. It's just a small prick in the finger where we extract a wee bit of blood and we are able to then put the blood into the testing cassette, and then our clients can go off on their way. And what we say is no news is good news. So we don't give any results today. Um, but we [00:00:30] will follow up with anyone who needs additional information and who has a positive, uh, preliminary diagnosis. I. I guess one of the, uh things would be often people would be anxious, I imagine. Yes, some people may be really anxious, and so we try to give them some information that no matter what the result is, they can still have a wonderful quality of life. And if they don't want to test today, we show them how to book a test on our website so that they can come to our centre, and if they're not from Wellington, [00:01:00] we let them know that we actually also have centres in Auckland in Christchurch, as well as some services for the regions as well. What we say in terms of ending HIV and new HIV infections, it's really important that we test often. So a good part of having a healthy sexual life is to know your status and by knowing your status testing. Often we can end new HIV transmission by 2025. [00:01:30] And you were saying earlier that you're also testing for other SS. Yeah, that's right. So we're here today with our lovely partner from the Cuba Street Clinic testing for other SD. So sexual health is doing gonorrhoea and chlamydia testing and we are testing for syphilis. There is a growing number of syphilis cases and so we really want to have the community come and get tested and know where they are for you personally. What? What is it like being [00:02:00] out in the park today? You know, being here today is really special for me because already since we've been setting up this morning, older men in the gay community have come and they've talked about how this didn't exist when they were younger. They some have shared their stories about being prosecuted in the past and what they've been through, so to see the joy of the community and everyone coming and celebrating together, I think it's really important from [00:02:30] a multi generation perspective because things have come really far in terms of equality and we still have a ways to go. But they've come incredibly far and New Zealand has really led the way. If somebody can't be here today, would you have a message for them? Yeah, if you can't be here today in terms of testing, we have our website ending HIV dot org dot nz where you can go online and you can book a test again. That's ending HIV dot org dot NZ to book a test [00:03:00] with us. And if you can't be here to partake in the celebrations, there are still pride events that will be happening in Wellington over the next few weeks, as well as Christchurch, Dunedin and Queenstown. Yeah.
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