Students and trade unionists lobby Parliament on AidsTrade unionists from UNISON and the National Union of Students (NUS) joined
parliamentarians and activists for a lobby of parliament in April to press
the government to do more for people with HIV and Aids in Africa. |
Top doctors are up in arms because vital extra money to improve sexual health
services is not reaching clinics.
The scandal came to light after a survey of doctors by the British Association
for Sexual Health and HIV (BASHH) found clinics had received just half of the
promised money.
In November, health secretary John Reid, announced a further £15 million
after a damning House of Commons health select committee report drew attention
to poor conditions at many clinics.
But around half of the £5 million allocated to genitourinary medicine
(GUM) services has not reached the clinics, the survey of doctors revealed.
Speaking at the British HIV Association conference, Professor Michael Adler,
consultant at University College Hospital, said patients were waiting as long
as two weeks for appointments.
“
People should be seen at GUM clinics in one to two days maximum, not in 12
days as is the national average,” Professor Adler told the meeting in
Cardiff.
“
Poor conditions at GUM premises are unacceptable and stigmatising to patients,’ he
added.
“
Many clinics are in the Dark Ages and are akin to Victorian workhouses and
around 20 per cent of clinics are housed in Portakabins.”
Eighty per cent of doctors said that they did not have enough resources to
manage their current workload and a majority said things were getting worse
rather than better.
Dr Angela Robinson, BASHH president and an HIV consultant at London’s
Mortimer Market, said the survey showed, “a failure of sexual health
to be seen as a priority.”
She suspected PCT were using the missing millions to bail out acute hospitals
in other areas.
The Department of Health told PN that the public health minister Melanie Johnson
has promised to investigate.
In a statement she said: “We have given additional funding to PCTs specifically
to improve sexual health services.
“
This survey appears to show that this is not happening in all areas, and this
is cause for concern. I will be investigating these claims carefully,” she
added.
Paul Ward, deputy chief executive at THT, said: “What we need is a co-ordinated
programme of investment by the NHS into HIV and GUM services.”
Hellos and goodbyes at NATDame Ruth Runciman, chair of the board of trustees at the National Aids Trust (NAT), pictured centre, welcomed new chief executive Deborah Jack, left, and wished best wishes and goodbye to former NAT chief executive Derek Bodell, right, at a reception held at Tate Modern in March. |
Sir Stephen Tumim rememberedHundreds of people attended a memorial service in early May at St Martin-in-the-Fields
church for the former HM Prisons Inspector and HIV campaigner Sir Stephen
Tumim. |
The
Court of Appeal has quashed the conviction of Mohammed Dica, jailed last year
for eight years for infecting two women with HIV.
Dica, age 38, from Mitchum, South London, was the first person in 137 years
in England to be convicted for transmitting a sexual disease.
But the appeal judges refused to release him on bail pending a retrial expected
to take place at Inner London Crown Court in mid June.
Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, sitting with Lord Justice Judge and Mr
Justice Forbes, ruled that the judge at Dica’s trial in October should
have brought to the jury’s attention the issue of whether the women had
consented to sexual intercourse and whether they knew he was HIV positive.
Lord Judge said consenting adults had always taken risks of infection or pregnancy.
Modern society has not criminalised those who willingly accepted the risks
and no one had been convicted in such circumstances.
But prosecutions could be brought against those who, knowing they were suffering
from HIV or some other serious sexual disease, recklessly transmitted it through
consensual intercourse and inflicted grievous bodily harm on a person from
whom the risk was concealed, Lord Judge ruled.
Somalian-born Dica was found guilty on two counts of causing grievous bodily
harm under Section 20 of the Offences Against the Person Act.
l Meanwhile, as Positive Nation went to press, Feston Konzani, 28, was jailed
for 10 years at Teeside Crown court for infecting three women with HIV.
The judge told Konzani, from Malawi, the GBH ‘fell into the very worst
category of the very worst sort’.
Konzani should have told the women, the judge added.
Women activists meet for first time
Twenty-five women from International Community of Women with HIV/Aids
(ICW) got together for the first time in London last month to discuss
ways to strengthen their global network |
