Dr Rupert Whitaker is one of the longest surviving people with HIV in Europe, and has been an advocate for patients for over 40 years.
Whitaker has been living in Manchester for five years, a move from London to a less busy and friendlier city.
He said: “There is a better quality of life here and it’s not too expensive for someone on a limited budget.”
He founded and runs the Tuke Institute, an internationally active think-tank looking to hold health-services to account.
He explained: “We want so-called ‘health’-services to ensure patients get well and stay well, and to avoid the revolving door of GPs dishing out pills only for patients to return to care once their health inevitably deteriorates again.”
I asked him if he thinks the healthcare system is corrupt.
“There is definitely corruption in the NHS: just look at what happens to whistleblowers like Dr. Chris Day. But also look at who benefits most from the way our health-system is designed: medics, not patients.
“We’re hoping to have integrated services at some point, which is a step in the right direction, but I have heard social workers who say they will never work with GPs due to the amount of power GPs demand. Who loses out? We do, as patients.
“The NHS is going to go down because physicians need to be top-dog all the time; it doesn’t work, it’s costly, it’s wasteful. A lot of medicine is no longer about what only they can do. For instance, the majority of GP appointments are driven by mental or social issues, even if they present as physical. So, each GP practice should have one clinical psychologist and one medical social worker for every two GPs. I’ve yet to see one practice in the country like that.
Data from 2021 on HIV diagnosis revealed Manchester had the highest number of HIV cases in the North West but the health of most people with HIV is now managed by GPs.
“Social and mental problems such as exclusion, poverty, trauma, depression and drug use drive HIV-infection and other problems that come along with that.
“The issue is that GPs and infectious disease physicians are not trained in mental health; they think they can pick it up as they go along because they look down on it. As a result, they often misdiagnose mental illnesses, which I saw first-hand working as an expert medical consultant to the courts for ten years. If you had cancer, would you trust a social worker who decided to pick up cancer-treatment as she went along? Why do we accept it when physicians do the same with mental illness?
Whitaker is famous for surviving epilepsy, stroke, cancer, major depression and heart attack, and has been given around six months to live on three separate occasions. He founded the Terrence Higgins Trust in 1982 which pioneered services for people with HIV/AIDS, for which he received an OBE, along with a number of other honours over the years. He has even been awarded a medal of bravery for helping stop an armed mugger. He has certainly led an eventful life, and so I ask him what he is most proud of.
Such criticism of healthcare resonates with the recent scandal of physician associates misdiagnosing, often leading to death.
“I don’t tend to have a sense of pride but rather a sense of duty, a duty to improve the world a bit — and that includes holding medical professions to account.”
Being one of the longest survivors of HIV, the advice he was willing to give was to be kind to yourself and try to achieve a good balance in life: “push the boat out sometimes, but don’t forget to nap” he laughs.
He is currently writing his memoir, with the working title Overstaying My Welcome.
