Positive Talk About Testing

posted: 20/01/2011

Positive gay men talking about the HIV test are a feature of a new website that encourages undiagnosed gay and bi men to take a HIV test every year. HIV testing is rising among gay and bisexual men; seven out of ten men have now taken a HIV test (and four in ten men took a HIV test last year). But 10,000 men do not know they already have HIV. All undiagnosed gay and bi men are now advised to have an annual HIV test.

I Did It campaign

A national testing campaign is now running across England using outdoor, online and gay press adverts. The I Did It campaign believes men are more likely to take a HIV test if they hear positive things from other men about testing, whatever the result.

The new website is to inspire and encourage men through other men’s test stories. It has a handy local clinic finder, and the men can later tell their own HIV test story.

Clips of positive men talking
Aside from men’s HIV test stories and the clinic finder, the website will have key facts about HIV tests, a discussion forum for men to talk about testing, videos of positive men talking about receiving a positive test result, and information on the support available for men who test HIV positive.

Manchester test-bed
Untested men in Manchester and London gave feedback on the I-Did-It campaign, which runs until March. There will be advertising on Gaydar radio, and it’ll be pushed on social media with Facebook and Twitter and a personal message to 50,000 men on Gaydar.

Three themes – handy, protecting, habit
There are three ads, about the convenience of testing, about testing to protect partners, and about making testing an annual habit. HIV tests give undiagnosed men certainty, or peace of mind.

The ‘I Did It’ campaign is one of a series in 2011 that encourage gay and bi men to talk about the ten things that cut the spread of HIV.

Details and publicity materials

For more details, the three A4 campaign posters, or online banner ads, please contact Richard Scholey at Terrence Higgins Trust on 020 7812 1782 or email him

Gene Testing Cuts Side Effects

posted: 12/01/2011

Testing people before they start HIV treatment for specific genes could stop many people suffering treatment side effects and avoid the need to change HIV treatment, new research suggests.

Like any medicine, HIV treatment drugs can cause side-effects. There are 23 genetic variations HIV doctors can now use to predict bad reactions, before patient and doctor decide what treatment drugs would be best.

Gene variation says no to Abacavir
We know well that people who have an allergic reaction to the drug abacavir (Ziagen, also in the combination pills Kivexa and Trizivir) have a gene variation that can be easily found.

People should always be tested for this gene before they start treatment with this drug. If you are tested and your result is positive, you shouldn’t take abacavir.

Other genes for other drugs
Now researchers have found that some genes increase the risk of side-effects caused by several other anti-HIV drugs.

They tested 577 patients starting HIV treatment for the first time to see if they had variations in genes associated with certain side-effects.

These were mood and sleep problems caused by efavirenz (Sustiva, also in the combination pill Atripla), and a non-dangerous yellowing of the skin and eyes caused by atazanavir (Reyataz).

Genes – side effects up to 9 times worse

People taking efavirenz who have the warning gene have much higher rates of mood and sleep problems – these are three times worse if you have this ‘warning’ gene.

The risk of atazanavir-related side-effects was increased nine-fold among people with the ‘warning’ gene for that.

We need more research into drug side effects linked to genes, the researchers say.

More side effects information

For more information on the side-effects of HIV treatment, NAM and i-Base both produce good side-effects booklets
 

Nam booklet – Side Effects

i-Base booklet - HIV and your quality of life: a guide to side effects and other complications
 

HIV, treatments and genes website
There is a useful new website on HIV, drug treatments and genes – HIV pharmacogenomics

More information on genetics and HIV treatment

Source, with reference 

Image

Time to Test for Under 25s

posted: 04/01/2011

All young people under-25 should be offered HIV tests as part of everyday healthcare when visiting hospital or seeing their GP, say sexual health charities.

New figures show 13,000 people under 25 in the UK have HIV. Leading sexual health charities, like BASSH and NAM, told the BBC they want routine HIV tests to be provided, no matter what the young person’s race, gender, sexuality or postcode.

Making HIV testing part of ordinary healthcare routines would mean more young people are diagnosed in good time. HIV treatments do not work well when people are diagnosed late, and late diagnosis is a big problem in North West England.
 

Aaron's story 

Currently only the people considered most at risk, like gay men, black Africans living in the UK or drug users who share injecting kit, are normally offered HIV tests. This ignores some people, like Aaron.
 

Aaron, 25, lives in Birmingham, is happily married with two kids and is HIV positive. He only found out after he started to feel run down in September 2009.
"I can always remember the day I got diagnosed - the ninth of the ninth '09. It started off thinking that I had swine flu and they gave me the Tamiflu tablets."
Aaron had a sore throat and a fever and was showing all the symptoms of HIV, but didn't know it. "It didn't actually come across the doctor's mind to put me in for an HIV test or anything else like that. It was only when I started getting a rash below that I was quite concerned and I didn't want my Mrs to find out."
 

Routine HIV testing of people under 25
If proposals for routine testing of under 25s go ahead, under-25s would be asked to take a HIV test during any GP visit or hospital treatment. Dr Steve Taylor is leading consultant at Birmingham's Heartlands HIV Service and he told the BBC: "One of the reasons that GPs and doctors don't often offer HIV tests is that we have a perception of what someone with HIV looks like. The average person on the street, like Aaron, just doesn't feature on the radar."
 

Aaron says he's thankful he was eventually offered a blood test. "The doctors put it off by giving me antibiotics, but I thought this isn't right. So I called NHS Direct and they actually referred me to get a routine blood test, which I'm happy I did otherwise I don't know where I'd be today." Being a heterosexual male with a wife and kids, doctors had previously missed the opportunity to test Aaron. "Back in the day I used to be a bit of a player and sleep with people without protection", he admits. Aaron is living a normal life and takes HIV treatments daily - he's just relieved he didn't infect his wife. "It was disturbing having to tell my wife that I have HIV. I was worried she'd think I was sleeping around. It's a miracle that she hasn't got it and I feel pleased that I haven't passed it on."
 

Pilot testing trials
In November 2009, several pilot HIV screening programmes were run as trials in Brighton (with its many gay men), Leicester, and in Lewisham (south-east London and with a large black African population). The Department of Health will now consider the Time to Test report from the Health Protection Agency on the results of these trials, and decide what to do. 

Time to Test recommendations to the government

• HIV testing in primary care and general medical admissions must be prioritised in areas with a high diagnosed HIV prevalence (i.e. more than 2 people in 1,000 15-59 year olds) and among most at-risk populations, in order to reduce late diagnoses and the proportion who are undiagnosed.
• Efforts are required to increase the uptake of HIV testing among people attending sexually transmitted infection (STI) clinics and to maintain high uptake of HIV testing among women attending for antenatal care.
• Community HIV testing services need to be appropriately targeted and established with strong community representation. To be successful these initiatives require long term commitment.
• Strong links between HIV specialist services and primary care, hospital and community projects are essential for immediate continuity of care for newly diagnosed patients. Particular attention should be paid to prompt referral of patients newly diagnosed in primary care and community services to minimise loss to follow-up.
• Economic evaluations, including cost-effectiveness studies, are needed to determine the best strategies to expand HIV testing in each of these settings.
• Concerted effort and ongoing resources (both human and financial) are needed to sustain successful projects beyond the research and pilot stages.
   

Time to Test report and recommendations (December 2010)

HIV and people under 25 in NW England

• By the end of 2009, there were 333 people under 25 diagnosed with HIV living in NW England
• Three quarters (248 out of 333) of the young people living in NW England got HIV sexually, as teenagers and young adults. Sex education around HIV is clearly not working for hundreds of young people. Almost all the other young people became HIV positive as a baby, from their mother 
• One in three of the 15 - 19 year olds got HIV through sex (most of those diagnosed between 15 and 19 were infected as babies - very few 15 - 19 year olds take HIV tests)
• Almost all the 213 young people between 20 and 24 years old got HIV sexually (only 9 got HIV in any other way)
• Around half the teens and young adults who got HIV sexually are bi and gay men, and the other half are heterosexual women and men (three quarters of the heterosexually infected people are young women)
• Most of the young gay and bi men with HIV are white, with around 5% having an ethnic minority background; most of the heterosexually infected young people have an ethnic minority background, with a minority who are white.
   

This analysis comes from figures in Tables 3.1 and 3.5 of the 2009 report on HIV in NW England. 

Halve It campaign
One in four people living with HIV in the UK is unaware they have the infection and therefore unable to access potentially life-saving treatment. Halve It is a new joint campaign aiming to halve, within five years, the proportion of people living with undiagnosed HIV infection and the proportion of people diagnosed late with HIV. The campaign is led by a coalition of HIV and healthcare experts, including MedFASH.
 

The Halve It position paper Early Testing Saves Lives calls on government nationally and locally to make HIV a public health priority. It was launched on World AIDS Day at the Time to Test for HIV multidisciplinary conference, by British HIV Association Chairman, Dr Ian Williams and MedFASH Chief Executive, Ruth Lowbury.

Early Testing Saves Lives    MedFash report for the national Halve It campaign

Time to test for HIV - videos and pdf files of all the presentations. Includes reports of the Brighton, Leicester and Lewisham HIV testing trials 
 

Source

Halving Undiagnosed HIV

posted: 09/12/2010

The Department of Health has welcomed a community-led policy for HIV testing called Halve It. The Halve It campaign aims to cut the number of people who have HIV but don’t know it, in half, and by 2015.

The Department of Health said: “We really welcome the Halve It campaign. Encouraging HIV testing is everyone’s business – the NHS, charities and groups, individuals, the media and industry.”

Best test early

If diagnosed early, HIV can be successfully treated and people with HIV live to near-normal life expectancies. Late diagnosis, by contrast, is associated with a greater risk of hospitalisation and AIDS-related illness, reduced life expectancy and increased cost to the NHS. It is also associated with increased onwards transmission, and continued sexual risk taking while people are unaware of their HIV-positive status.

Halve It is a new coalition of national experts determined to tackle the continued public health challenges posed by HIV. This campaign is being supported by BHIVA (British HIV Association).

They have produced a position paper Early Testing Saves Lives

Simon Kirby, the Conservative MP in Brighton Kemptown, is the vice-chair of the All-Parliamentary Group for HIV/AIDS. He said he was “delighted” that the government supports the campaign. Calling the target “ambitious and admirable”, he said: “I am delighted that the government will support the coalition of experts involved in the Halve It Campaign in achieving their goal.”

Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, added: “What we really need is a much stronger commitment from the government to properly address the issue – and, importantly, some assurances that greater resources will be made available for those working in HIV detection”.

Action not words
The chief executive of the National AIDS Trust, Deborah Jack, said the government needed to do more action than simply making welcoming noises. “The Halve It campaign requires leadership and support from the top – and it would be good to know what plans the government has to reduce significantly the rates of late HIV diagnosis in the UK,” she said.

NW England has the worst rate of late diagnosis in England.

Call for national screening
The Halve It campaign calls on the government to set up a national screening programme, and to make HIV testing more accessible.

Baroness Gould talked about this at the autumn party conferences. She pointed out this was the first time that there had been a really active campaign around undiagnosed HIV and highlighted the case for including sexual health and HIV in the upcoming new Public Health White Paper. "We need to analyse why people don't get tested", she said.

Dr. Ed Wilkins (consultant at the regional specialist HIV centre, North Manchester General Hospital) said the problem was that too many patients appear with symptoms of long HIV infection, with serious complications brought about by a damaged immune system. Early testing for HIV has to be a public health priority.

Doctors miss chances
"75% of people who have been diagnosed late, originally visited a GP with ill health and the virus wasn't picked up so there is clearly a need to educate health professionals about early diagnosis too." said Dr. Wilkins.

Men with the wrong ideas
Sir Nick Partridge (Terrence Higgins Trust chief executive) highlighted that HIV testing is quick, easy and it can save lives and far too many people do not realise this. Sir Nick drew attention to the fact that men, whether they are gay or heterosexual and whatever their ethnicity including African, still have out of date ideas about HIV and what treatment and testing is like.

He pointed out that 1 in 7 gay men on the gay scene in London are HIV positive (it is around 1 in 10 in Manchester and Blackpool) and that 1 in 5 gay men with HIV do not know this. Many men have never taken a HIV test.

We need more community based, easily accessible rapid testing clinics to target high risk groups of undiagnosed people, such as African men and men who have sex with men.
David Cairns Labour MP for Inver Clyde said that "MP's on the all party Parliamentary Group on HIV are 100% behind the new 'Halve It' campaign. Stigma is still an enormous challenge to overcome."

Get Tested
The Lesbian & Gay Foundation's Rapid HIV Testing clinic for gay and bi men runs every Thursday at LGF, 5 Richmond Street, Manchester, M1 3HF.
The clinic takes place every Thursday at The LGF from 4-6pm and you can just drop-in, as no appointment is necessary.
 

You can find details of the nearest HIV test centres in NW England here

Early Testing Saves Lives - the Halve It  campiagn position paper

Email MP for World AIDS Day

posted: 22/11/2010

One in 4 people living with HIV in the UK don’t know they have HIV. That means that about 22,000 people are not getting the treatment they need to stay well. Untested people are also much more likely to pass HIV on to others.
 

Undiagnosed people - halve by 2015

We, and Terrence Higgins Trust, wants to halve undiagnosed HIV within five years. By increasing testing and reaching those most at risk, we can improve the health and life expectancy of people with HIV, reduce new HIV infections, improve public health and save the state money.
 

There is a strong case for government action. What we need is the political will to deal with the problem head on. This is where you, as a valued campaigner, can help.
In Parliament for World AIDS Day (1 December) there is an event to inform and persuade MPs, organised by Terrence Higgins Trust. We want your MP to be there.
 

Take two minutes to email

Please take 2 minutes to email your own MP to ask them to attend this. Your postcode on the online form produces an instant email to your MP, which you just click to send. Thank You.