For the first time, Şişli, Istanbul, Municipality initiated free health care services for the LGBTI communities. LGBTI individuals will be able to benefit from health care services for free and, if they would like to do so, using nicknames rather than disclosing their identities. Read More
Half of HIV+ Gay Men Don’t Take Life-Saving Drugs
A survey from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shows dramatic deficits in treatment among those at highest risk of HIV infection. The reasons why men don’t get—or stick with—treatment range from cost to misperceptions about the toxicity of current drug therapies to the enduring stigma of HIV. Read More
Can the Catholic Church Help End HIV?
This year National Latino AIDS Awareness Day coincides with new conversations happening around two very important areas of HIV prevention for Latinos: PrEP and stigma. A shift in tone from the Catholic Church could result in how Latino families embrace their loved ones who happen to be gay, lesbian or transgender.
What does this mean for Latinos and HIV?
It means that the stigma around being gay may be coming to an end. It means that Latino men and women may feel safer to come out of the closet to their family, their community and to a church that will not only tolerate them, but embrace them. It means that we may be closer than ever to ending HIV by reducing the stigma surrounding what it means to HIV-positive. Read More
High effectiveness seen in English PrEP trial
The Steering Committee* of the PROUD trial of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in gay men in England announced today that participants currently on the deferred arm of the study, who have not yet started PrEP, will be recalled to their clinics and offered the opportunity to begin PrEP ahead of schedule. This is because the effectiveness seen in the trial has exceeded the threshold set for trial continuation.
Although the exact effectiveness seen in the trial is yet to be established pending analysis and follow-up of participants, the indications are that it is considerably in excess of that originally anticipated by the researchers. Read more
Second European PrEP study is closed early due to high effectiveness
In an extraordinary development, a second European scientific trial of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) has had its randomised phase closed early due to high effectiveness, just two weeks after the UK PROUD trial did exactly the same thing. The investigators of the IPERGAY trial, which has six sites in France and one in Canada, announced today a “Significant breakthrough in the fight against HIV and AIDS” because IPERGAY had successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of its PrEP regimen.
The ANRS IPERGAY trial demonstrates the effectiveness of a preventive treatment (antiretroviral treatment) against HIV/AIDS when taken at the time of sexual intercourse. All trial participants will now benefit from this prophylaxis. Read More
Ebola, HIV, and the Politics of Contagion: Op-Ed
Throughout American history, there are dozen of cases of hysteria surrounding the apparent outbreak of an epidemic, from recent fears over Asian bird flu to fears of cholera outbreaks in the 19th century. But the question of fear needs to be contextualized, not just in terms of alleviating Americans' paranoia, but rather by thinking about how various populations within the nation have consistently lived under a threat of infection.
The fear of Ebola tells us more about one's social status and, dare I say, privilege, rather than about the disease itself. For many gay men, who have lived amid HIV "outbreak" for the last thirty years, the threat of Ebola perhaps has not rattled them as much as their heterosexual counterparts. Read More
CDC director on Ebola: 'Only thing like this has been AIDS'
The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called for a stronger response to the spread of Ebola on Thursday, saying that "we have to work now so that this is not the world's next AIDS."
Chinua Akukwe, the lead African analyst with the National Academy of Public Administration, told lawmakers Wednesday that the U.S. should look at its response to HIV/AIDS over the last decade when mapping out its plan to fight Ebola. The HIV and Ebola outbreaks have struck different corners of the continent, but both hit quickly and powerfully, straining fragile governments and even more fragile health systems. Both diseases are difficult to treat and come with strong stigmas. Read More
More Than Half of Gay and Bisexual Men Say a Doctor Has Never Suggested HIV Testing
American gay men and their doctors aren’t talking enough about sex, and that’s making it harder to control the spread of H.I.V. That’s the conclusion of a new survey of gay and bisexual men by the Kaiser Family Foundation. It found that 47 percent of the men have never discussed their sexual orientation with their doctors, and 56 percent have never been advised by a doctor to be tested for H.I.V. Read More
Thailand Hits Party Scene To Combat HIV Rates Among Gay, Bisexual Men
Bare-chested male models strutted through the glitzy ballroom in Bangkok to the beat of house music while dozens of young gay men waited anxiously, working up the nerve to have a blood test. Once touted as an HIV success story, Thailand is now faced with infection rates in its gay population comparable to those in Africa's AIDS hotspots. Read More
Study finds more gay men now die of suicide than HIV
New research suggests that suicide has surpassed HIV as a leading cause of death among gay and bisexual men in Canada. The study examines suicide and HIV-related mortality data from Statistics Canada, the Canadian Community Health Survey and other sources from 2000 to 2011. Read More
Gay Conversion Therapy: A bigger Threat to Africa than Scott Lively
Rev. Dr. Kapya Kaoma was the original researcher to expose the ties between U.S. right-wing evangelicals and the anti-LGBTQ legislation in Uganda, and has testified before Congress and the United Nations. He is the author of "Globalizing the Culture Wars" and "Colonizing African Values," and appears as an expert voice in the 2013 documentary God Loves Uganda. He argues that pseudoscience is the biggest threat to African equality. Read More
From Diagnoses to Dignity -- Barriers to Health Care for Transgender People
Dorian Wilde, an activist from Malaysia, was thrilled to be invited to the World Professional Association of Transgender Health symposium in Bangkok, but his journey to Thailand was fraught. His experience is not unique - to him, to Malaysia, or to air travel. Transgender people everywhere face extraordinary barriers when attempting to access services, including the most essential, such as health care.
From being labelled as having a disorder to shouldering the burden of some of the highest rates of violence and HIV infection in the world, the perils of daily life for transgender people are multi-layered and can inflict substantial harm, experts and activists say. Read More