27/09/2024
The Terrence Higgins Trust sponsored a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show recently. The organisation explained as follows "The Terrence Higgins Trust Bridge to 2030 Garden was one of the highlights of the world-famous RHS Chelsea Flower Show last month. Created by award-winning garden designer Matthew Childs, the garden took hundreds of thousands of visitors on a journey from the fear and sadness of the 1980s through to today where we are on a mission to end new HIV cases by 2030. Our spectacular garden will now be moving in July to a new home outside Croydon Health Services NHS Trust’s sexual health clinic to provide an inviting permanent space of calm and reflection for patients and visitors, many of whom are there to test for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. It’s hoped this will help to break down some of the stigma and taboo about sexual health. Croydon Hospital has a strong link to the UK achieving the goal of ending new HIV cases by 2030, and was a pilot site for opt-out HIV testing in its A&E department. Those pilots were so successful that this HIV testing approach has been expanded with the roll out to 81 hospitals across England".
