Recently the finger has been turned to point to certain drugs such as mephedrone and the emergence of smartphone apps such as Grindr that make it easier for people to hook up – the powerful combination of stronger, cheaper stimulants and the means to contact a lot of “up-for-it” men in a short period of time.
Seminar- Coffee, Tea or PrEP/PEP. Registration is open now. Email will be send for confirmation due to the limited amount of seats available.
“In an effort to stay as authentic as possible, we worked to create images that were an accurate depiction of the community,” Jackson says in a release. “To connect the mobile message with the L.A. LGBT Center’s new West Hollywood location, we shot all of the images at popular West Hollywood LGBT hotspots. We also used models who were a part of the LGBT community and represented the demographics that use these dating apps.”
To take PrEP or not to take PrEP? That is the question; the question that’s trending among gay men, me included, who are still learning about the breakthrough medication.PrEP is not a silver bullet to eradicate the epidemic, but it is considered to be effective to fight back the worrying statistics
Gay saunas and night clubs are the traditional venues for many sexual liaisons, but these places are less of a concern to HIV prevention workers than the new route to finding sex: mobile phone applications.
Many young gay men now hook up through phone apps, but sexual health organisations are still using old-fashioned approaches to fight HIV. They send peer outreach workers to the physical places where young gay men are known to meet, but this overlooks a large portion who no longer frequent such places.
Dear colleagues and friends,
Warm greetings from us in APCOM. We wish to extend our gratitude for your confidence to APCOM as a regional community representation of MSM and transgender people. We are very excited to share that, in partnership with UNAIDS and WHO, APCOM is organising a regional consultation exploring the feasibility of the implementation/scale up services of Pre Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) in the region. Titled “PrEPARING ASIA: A new direction for HIV prevention among MSM” the consultation will bring in representatives of gay identified men, other men who have sex with men (MSM), transgender people, sexual health policy makers, program planners and service providers and explore the potential of scaling up PrEP. The consultation is expected to be conducted in Bangkok on 23-25 September 2015.
If you are a gay man, MSM or transgender individual living in Asia, we are kindly requesting you to accomplish the below survey. Through the survey, we are gathering initial thoughts and perceptions of the community living in Asia on PrEP and present the findings during the consultation.
The survey will also ask if you wish to participate in the regional meeting. The survey will serve as an application form from which APCOM screens potential individuals and community representatives as participants – with travel and accommodation cost being covered by APCOM.
By Roger Pebody
Three-quarters of Australian gay and bisexual men who report unprotected anal intercourse with casual male partners say that they “often” or “always” employ some sort of risk reduction strategy with those partners. Many attempt to select partners who they believe have the same HIV status as themselves (serosorting); a significant proportion use condoms most but not all of the time; and smaller numbers practice ‘strategic positioning’ or withdrawal before ejaculation.
The study shows that a simple, black and white division of gay men into low risk ‘condom users’ and high risk ‘men who don’t use condoms’ is misleading. However that is sometimes the impression given by behavioural surveys.
Martin Holt of the University of New South Wales presented the data to the 20th International AIDS Conference in Melbourne yesterday. It is derived from an analysis of the responses to two large-scale, cross-sectional community surveys of Australian gay and bisexual men in 2011 and 2012. A total of 15,615 completed the surveys.
Overall, 38% had no casual partners (and are not included in this analysis, even if they did not use condoms with their partner), 28% always used condoms with casual partners and 13% had no anal sex.
That leaves 21% who reported anal sex without a condom with at least one casual partner in the previous year – this group was the focus of the study.
Moreover as risk reduction strategies differ according to HIV status, the analysis made comparisons between the 2339 men who had tested HIV negative and the 603 men who were diagnosed with HIV. The small number of men who had never tested for HIV were excluded from the analysis.
Holt was interested in risk-reduction strategies the men used “often” or “always” with casual partners, including:
HIV-positive men who didn’t consistently used condoms with casual partners reported serosorting (60%), condoms (22%), strategic positioning (17%) and withdrawal (15%).
HIV-negative men were more likely to report using condoms most of the time, but serosorting was still the most widely reported tactic (44%), followed by condoms (41%), strategic positioning (24%) and withdrawal (22%).
Three-quarters of men reported using more than one strategy; the strategies most commonly combined were serosorting and condom use.
There was a very strong association between using these strategies and disclosing HIV status to sexual partners. This was the case both for HIV-positive and HIV-negative men.
For example, for HIV-negative men, those who disclosed to some sexual partners were almost twice as likely to practice a strategy as those who did not (odds ratio 1.76, 95% confidence interval 1.39 – 2.21) and those who disclosed to all partners were three times as likely to have a strategy (odds ratio 3.43, 95% confidence interval 2.66 – 4.42).
HIV-positive men who always disclosed were seven times more likely to use these strategies (7.11, 95% CI 3.70 – 13.67).
HIV-negative men who had a regular partner were less likely to practice any risk reduction strategy if their partner was untested or HIV negative.
Martin Holt concluded that interventions should aim to improve the consistency with which gay and bisexual men employ risk reduction strategies. Men should be encouraged to disclose their HIV status, to make effective agreements with their regular partners about casual sex and to choose the best strategy in different scenarios. Alternative approaches such as PrEP are likely to be appropriate for those men unable or unwilling to use existing strategies.
Holt M et al. Consistent and inconsistent use of HIV risk reduction strategies by Australian gay and bisexual men who report unprotected anal intercourse with casual male partners. 20th International AIDS Conference, Melbourne, 2014, abstract THAD0101.
First Published By: aidsmap.com on 25 July 2014
It’s been called, simultaneously, a medicine to “end the HIV epidemic” and a “party drug:” Pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP for short, refers to a daily antiviral treatment that prevents HIV.
That’s right: People who don’t have the virus can take a pill a day to save themselves from getting infected.
Haven’t heard about PrEP? You’re probably not alone. The drug-maker, Gilead, doesn’t advertise Truvada (its brand name) for prevention, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention only endorsed it this past May—two years after it hit the market.
Going forward, however, you’ll be hearing a lot more. This month, both the International Antiviral Society-USA and the World Health Organization—opinion leaders in medicine—backed the antiviral, recommending all HIV-negative at-risk individuals consider taking it as part of a strategy to reduce the global incidence of the disease. But there’s a lot more to the story. Here’s what you need to know:
Click to read more about the above 10 points
First published on vox.com – 21 July 2014