Positive Men’s Sex Rights
posted: 09/03/2010
Calls to improve the sexual health of gay and bisexual men living with HIV across England were made at the national gay men’s sexual health conference that has just ended in Sheffield. George House Trust put up a strong case for improving the sexual health support provided for all men living with HIV.
Top experts
The conference heard from four George House Trust experts, including young gay Positive Speaker Craig, who came out about having HIV to thousands at the Manchester Pride Candlelit Vigil. In five out of the six conference sessions, our experts led the way. The conference heard that meeting the sexual health needs of gay and bisexual men living with HIV is critical, about positive prevention (involving positive men in reducing onward HIV transmission), calls for widespread campaigns to stop HIV stigma among gay men, and for the greater use of positive speakers to challenge stigma and empower men living with HIV.
And positive men too
We’ve been campaigning about these for years. Our efforts are paying off, but improving things across the whole country is slow because we can only persuade and encourage other organisations to do the right thing. At last, CHAPS has now added supporting men living with HIV to the national strategy for gay and bisexual men’s HIV prevention.
Status check
With LGF, who are part of CHAPS, we produced our Update Your Status campaign encouraging undiagnosed gay and bisexual men to test regularly for HIV. Testing and diagnosis helps improve the sexual health of men who do turn out to have HIV and cuts the number of gay men diagnosed with HIV too late for the men to get the best out of their HIV treatment.
Positive prevention pioneers
In the next couple of months we will hold an national symposium in Manchester for experts in Positive Prevention with gay and bisexual men with HIV. This will start work on the first national CHAPS programme for gay men’s positive prevention.
Positive prevention was neglected because the national strategy aimed instead at undiagnosed men. This left out the many positive men who are passionate about reducing HIV transmission. George House Trust wants men with HIV involved in developing the resources, knowledge and skills to maximize sexual health and cut HIV transmission.
Work in some countries on positive prevention is well ahead of the UK – for instance Canada already has its national Poz Prevention strategy and has produced a booklet for HIV+ gay men and Ireland has its own booklet.
Face to face and working behind the scenes
Most of George House Trust’s efforts directly support people living with HIV. What is not so well known is our important behind the scenes work. This backstage work aims to cut the number of people becoming HIV positive and working for better services to meet the changing needs of people living with HIV across the country. It’s not so glamorous and it often takes time to show results, but work like this is essential to prevent even more gay and bisexual men from needing services in the first place, as well as improving the lives of men who do have HIV.
Our behind the scenes work is a form of long term indirect prevention - taking steps to stop even more people becoming HIV positive. Everyone who gets HIV potentially requires a life time of support from services such as ours.
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