'Dongle' turns smartphone into mobile lab to diagnose HIV, syphilis

Engineers have created a compact, handheld device that plugs into an iPhone and turns it into a mobile laboratory that can diagnose HIV and syphilis in just 15 minutes. “This kind of capability can transform how health care services are delivered around the world,” study leader Samuel K. Sia, a biomedical engineer at Columbia, said in a statement. Read More

Indonesia: AIDS activists use social media to reach gay community

Jakarta-based program "Scaling Up For Most-At-Risk Populations (SUM)", has launched a social media campaign called #GueBerani (I am brave) in order to encourage gay men to get tested for HIV.

Program leader Erlian Rista Aditya said he believed social media would become an effective tool in their public health campaign because 83 million people in Indonesia were active internet users and almost all of them used social media. Read More

Uganda: 9 gay men threatened by mob, arrested by police

Nine young gay men have been released after being held in police custody for five days in western Uganda.Without knowing it, the men had put their lives in jeopardy by visiting an STI screening clinic, which attracted the attention of a homophobic mob.

Police at first detained the men on Jan. 15 to protect them from the mob, which threatened to beat or kill them. Once they were in custody, police began considering filing sodomy charges against them. Read More

Bisexual women are more likely to self-harm than lesbians

A new study published in the Journal of Public Health has claimed  bisexual women were 65% more likely to report eating problems and 37% were more likely to self-harm than lesbians.

Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine also found they were more likely to have suffered from depression and anxiety than lesbians. Read More

Trans Buddy Program to Support LGBT Patients

Fear of being stigmatized by healthcare professionals is a barrier for many patients who are members of the LGBT community — it’s one of the most-reported reasons transgender individuals do not go to the doctor.

A peer advocacy volunteer group at Vanderbilt University Medical Center plans to change that through a pilot program called Trans Buddy. Program founder, Kale Edmiston said: “I want transgender patients to know that they can come to Vanderbilt and be treated with respect. Through Trans Buddy, patients will have the support of someone they can relate to and trust.”

Trans Buddy will provide support services during primary care, clinic, and specialty appointments as well as have an on-call service for emergent care.  Read More

Zimbabwe: Health minister calls for better healthcare for men having sex in prison

Despite there being laws against gay sex in Zimbabwe, a health minister has called for better healthcare for men who have sex with men in prison. Calls were made by stakeholders in the health sector, for gay men should be included in HIV and AIDS strategies.

Dr Owen Mugurungi, the HIV and TB director at the Zimbabwean Ministry of Health said it would be disastrous to ignore the fact that men have gay sex in prisons.
“We might want to deny that men have sex with men but we know that in prisons that thing does happen,” he said. Read More 

US: Rare type of syphilis infects 6 statewide, leaves 2 blind

Health officials are warning about an unusual cluster of syphilis infections that strike the eyes, with six cases reported in Washington state since mid-December, including four in King County. Two people have been blinded by the disease. That’s an unusually high number of cases of ocular syphilis, which affects fewer than one in every million people in the general population each year, according to Dr. Russell Van Gelder, chair of the ophthalmology department at the University of Washington. Even among people with syphilis, ocular disease is detected in perhaps 10 percent of patients, he added.

The King County cases are all men, including three who report having sex with other men, the group most affected by syphilis in the region. Three are HIV-positive; people with HIV are often infected with syphilis, too. Read more via the Seattle Times

Appeals Court Upholds Condom Use In Porn Films Being Shot In LA

A Los Angeles County ordinance requiring actors in pornographic films to use condoms does not violate the porn industry’s First Amendment rights of free expression, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. The decision rejected the industry’s contention that having actors use condoms would interfere with a film’s fantasy element by subjecting viewers to real-world concerns like pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Read More

Chinese Court Sides With Gay Man in ‘Conversion’ Suit

In a victory for gay rights advocates in China, a Beijing court ruled on Friday that a Chinese clinic must pay compensation to a gay man who sued it for giving him electric shocks intended to change his sexual orientation and stating that homosexuality is not a mental illness. Read More

Taiwan rejects progressive trans policy

This past week, the Ministry of Interior decided to not adopt the recommendation from the Ministry of Health and Welfare that transgender individuals wishing to change their genders should not have to go through psychiatric evaluations nor be subjected to surgery removing their sex organs. The MOI asserted that there is room for discussion on this issue because of the human rights of the transgender individuals, but it also warned that social order and harmony must be maintained.

Transgender activists, including the Intersex, Transgender and Transsexual People Care Association, are understandably upset that a policy recommendation that would have been one of the most progressive in the world in terms of gender transitioning (most jurisdictions that do not mandate surgery still require psychiatric evaluations) is not being adopted. Read More