Just before “Treatment as Prevention” hit the headlines with some controversy, PrEP or Pre Exposure Prophylaxis, was on everybody’s lips.

PrEP is an experimental approach that would use antiretroviral medications (ARVs, which are normally used to treat people living with HIV) to reduce the risk of HIV infection in HIV-negative people. In this intervention, HIV-negative people would take a single drug or a combination of drugs with the hope that it would lower their risk of infection if exposed to HIV. PrEP trials are ongoing around the world. (Source: AVAC)

Whilst some …

Treatment as a means to prevent HIV infection has hit the media following a declaration by Brian Williams, professor of epidemiology at the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis in Stellenbosch, at the AAAS in San Diego.
Whilst the HIV epidemic has shown some signs of stabilisation in the recent years, more than 7,000 people are still infected every day with the virus that causes AIDS.
Despite interesting results of a vaccine trial in Thailand, prevention is still limited to a small number of options many of which are not …

In a clear and well argumented post (which title I borrowed) for NOMOREPOTLUCKS, Nicholas Little, an HIV outreach worker in bathhouses, bars and online chat rooms explains how stigma attached to being HIV positive puts HIV negative men at higher risk of HIV infection.
There is not much to add to the article but to emphasise the deep contradiction existing in the mind and attitude of like-to-believe HIV negative men: On the one hand, they naively expect and believe that HIV positive guys will disclose their status before sex, but on …

Two important articles have appeared in The Bangkok Post newspaper since last week’s cancellation of the 2nd Chiang Mai Gay Pride Parade because a small group of red-shirted pro-Thaksin demonstrators objected to the event taking place in a public space.
The first was an announcement by Pairote Boonsirikamchai, assistant secretary-general of the Medical Council of Thailand that under 18 now could receive a free HIV test and counselling at clinics without their parents’ consent.
This is definitively a step forward. By making counselling accessible to the most vulnerable people in society, that …

In Sizwe’s Test (originally entitled Three Letters Plague), author Jonny Steinberg recalled his deep feeling of shame associated with his first HIV test. Discussing his experience with a psychotherapist friend, she found an analogy with how pregnant women were prohibited to appear in public three or four generations ago as they would have been a huge source of shame.
“What was the root of that shame? What was it that had to be concealed? It is not the fact that she has sex. Everyone knows she has. It is the external …