Positive Prevention Conference
posted: 23/05/2011
We are delighted to invite people and organisations already involved in 'Positive Prevention' activities to our free Positive Prevention Conference, in Manchester, Friday 1st July, 10.30 - 4.30pm
The booking form can be downloaded if you Read More below.
Positive Prevention means meeting the support and sexual health needs of people diagnosed with HIV and so reduce the risk of onward HIV transmission.
This conference is only for people and organisations already doing Positive Prevention activities. This might include campaigns against HIV stigma and discrimination.
George House Trust's positive prevention work, for example, provides one to one support, group 'peer support' spaces, five-session courses for newly diagnosed people, and reflective facilitated residential weekends for people who have been diagnosed longer than 12 months. This work and this conference is funded by the Elton John AIDS Foundation.
Share Best Practice and discuss Minimum Standards
This Conference is to share the experience and best practice of organisations and individuals already providing Positive Prevention support to gay men, women, and Africans, and to consider developing minimum standards for Positive Prevention.
Positive Prevention Conference
Friday 1st July 2011, at Ardwick Green North, Manchester M12 6FZ: 5 - 10 minutes walk from Manchester Piccadilly Rail
Programme
10.00 Registration & coffee
10.30 Welcomes and Introduction
10.45 Involving people living with HIV in positive prevention
- Presentations describing various ways people living with HIV are involved
- Discussion: enabling people living with HIV to challenge providers and commissioners about meeting sexual health needs when people are living with HIV and improving involvement
11.30 Tea & Coffee break
11.45 Recipes for positive prevention – what’s needed?
Presentations providing an overview and meeting the specific needs of 3 groups – gay men, women and Africans
- Small Group discussions on the needs of people living with HIV and how best these can be met
- Debate the key elements and the minimum provision of positive prevention that HIV+ people should expect
1pm LUNCH and networking : lunch provided
1.45pm Workshops - How do you do it?
- Small groups identify the critical ingredients for effective positive prevention for the three groups - gay men, women and Africans
2.45pm Tea & Coffee break
3pm Evidencing & Measuring
Gathering evidence and measuring effectiveness of Positive Prevention activities
3.30pm Panel Discussion: Agreeing Minimum Standards and Next Step Recommendations
4.20 Closing words
Close at 4.30
Please complete and return this booking form to Colin
Please send all Bookings and Enquiries to Colin
The Elton John AIDS Foundation has funded this conference
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Treatment Protects Partners
posted: 13/05/2011
There’s been a lot of publicity in the last day or so about HIV treatment helping stop the spread of HIV. 96% of HIV transmissions among couples are blocked by early treatment of the partner with HIV, was the headline result from a multinational study.
The results were so striking that the study was stopped three years early and everyone with HIV who was not already on HIV treatment was immediately offered HIV treatment.
The results show that treating people living with HIV is at least as good as using condoms to prevent HIV transmission.
Universal access to treatment goal
This treatment for prevention success offers an extra reason for pushing the world to achieve the internationally agreed World Health Organisation goal of universal access to HIV treatment, prevention and care. The goal was to reach universal access by 2010, but better late than never. Millennium Development Goal 6 includes halting and beginning to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015.
Gay men too?
The study included hardly any gay couples (only 3% were gay), so the results don’t prove a 96% reduction in transmission in gay couples. Other evidence already strongly suggests gay men living with HIV on successful treatment are also much less likely to transmit HIV, but probably not by the same amount. (Anal sex is riskier than vaginal sex for passing on HIV, gay men tend to have more partners than heterosexual couples, and other sexually transmitted infections also raise the risks).
What they found
The study began in 2005 of 1763 couples where one partner has HIV and the other did not (97% were heterosexual couples). They wanted to find out whether HIV treatment prevented the uninfected partner from getting HIV. It was an international study at 13 sites in Botswana, Brazil, India, Kenya, Malawi, S Africa, Thailand, USA (only one couple were from the USA), and Zimbabwe.
They split the couples in half randomly and half the partners with HIV immediately started HIV treatment (with CD4 counts higher than normal for starting treatment at between 350 and 550). The other half of positive partners only started treatment when their CD4 count fell to 250 or less, or they developed an AIDS defining illness.
- 39 (2.2%) of the negative partners out of 1763 got HIV
- Up to 11 of the 39 got HIV from someone else, not their partner in the study
- 28 (1.5%) got HIV from their partner in the study, and all but one of those were infected by positive partners who were in the delayed treatment half of the study.
That result was so stark they stopped the study and offered immediate treatment to everyone with HIV not already on treatment because the prevention effect of early treatment was so clear. Early treatment also prevented partners from getting tuberculosis (TB) with only 3 of the people treated early getting TB, compared with 17 of those treated after their CD4 count fell below 250. There were slightly more deaths among the deferred treatment group, but the difference was not statistically significant.
You can read the report from the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases here and their Q&A page about the study here
Aidsmap’s report
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Search HIV Conference Papers
posted: 18/04/2011
The Global Forum on Men who have Sex with Men and HIV (MSMGF) have produced a useful searchable online catalogue of all the papers presented at the last International AIDS Conference, held in Vienna - AIDS 2010 - concerning men who have sex with men (MSM) including transgender people.
Searchable catalogue of conference abstracts - you can search by global region, sub-populations (groups affected), and themes.
Here’s the list of search categories to make it easier to find what is available.
Sub-population (affected groups)
• Bisexual / MSMW
• Ethnic Minorities
• Incarcerated Individuals
• LGBT
• Migrant, Immigrant
• MSM
• Older Sexual Minorities
• People Living with HIV
• People Who Use Drugs
• Rural Populations
• Sex Workers
• Transgender
• Youth
HIV issues
• Access to Services
• Care & Treatment
• Condom Use
• Education
• Epidemiology
• Government AIDS Programs
• HIV & AIDS
• Prevention Interventions (ARV-Based)
• Prevention Interventions (Behavioural)
• Prevention Interventions (General)
• Resilience
• Risk Factors
• Testing
Cross-Cutting Themes / Issues
• Advocacy
• Capacity-Building Assistance
• Civil Society
• Funding
• Gender
• Health (Non-HIV)
• Human Rights
• Mental Health
• Policy and Legislation
• Recreational Drugs
• Religion
• Research
• Self-Identification
• Sexuality
• Sexually Transmitted Infections
• Stigma / Discrimination
• Structural Interventions
• Tools & Trainings
• Violence
Searchable catalogue of conference abstracts
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Gay Businesses - HIV Prevention
posted: 18/04/2011
Gay venues and businesses, like saunas, clubs, bars, profile and other gay websites, travel agencies and hotels, can either help reduce, or may increase the numbers of HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STI) among gay, bi and other men who have sex with men (MSM).
There’s a new guide which sets out for businesses standards that will help not hinder HIV prevention called Everywhere. It comes from the University of Brighton.
Persuading gay businesses to help reduce the numbers of HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STI) needs more than persuasion skills, it needs HIV prevention organisations to have ways of selling the advantages of HIV and STI prevention to these businesses.
Sex sells, so how can HIV prevention help these businesses sell themselves? The answers and training for HIV prevention organisations are provided in a training manual to go with the prevention standards manual for gay businesses.
One part of the training manual is called ‘Incentives for MSM business to be socially responsible’ and another is about working with hostile businesses. The training manual for helping HIV prevention organisations work with gay serving businesses to reduce HIV and other STI transmissions, is the Training Workbook on Social Mediation with Gay and MSM Businesses regarding HIV/STI prevention.
Both the standards for businesses and the the training manual are the work of the Europe-wide Everywhere Consortium for HIV prevention and their website has sections for gay men’s HIV and sexual health organisations, for businesses serving gay and bi men, and for gay men a section of the website lists venues and businesses which meet these HIV and sexual health prevention standards. So far few businesses are listed as meeting these standards - in the UK there are some in London and Brighton; in France some in Paris, in Spain some in Madrid, for example.
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Comforted Creatures Video
posted: 14/04/2011
We produced this animation (with apologies to Ardman Animation’s Creature Comforts) as a serious but amusing presentation on some of our work, for the Elton John AIDS Foundation. You can view it on the new videos page of the HIV magazine Baseline.
We interviewed people with HIV who have benefited from our positive prevention work and residential weekends, funded by the Elton John AIDS Foundation.
Excellent Presentation
After presenting all our Positive Prevention work which they have funded, to the Foundation's panel, they told us:
"George House Trust were the first to present and I have to say set a standard that was not replicated. If there was ever a lesson on how to do an interesting presentation, that was it.
Lynda and Colin spoke with passion about the work, the achievements so far and the publication of initial outcomes (they had the BHIVA/NHIVNA poster displayed).
An individual talked very openly and honestly about how he had benefited from the programme and to top it all we were treated to an animated film with people’s real experiences of the support and help they had received.
A perfect presentation with something for everyone - excellent!"
CHAPS impressed
We also showed this at the recent CHAPS conference held in Manchester for organisations and people involved in HIV prevention work with men who have sex with men. Robbie Currie, a leading NHS HIV prevention commissioner in London was very impressed, asking number of questions and commenting how useful a resource it was, and his interested in having something similar.
View Comforted Creatures here http://www.baseline-hiv.co.uk/latest-videos
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