Fifty ballons were released at the Leicester conference opening ceremony,
each representing 1,000 people living with HIV in the UK. Pictured (L to R);
Bernard Forbes (UKC chairman), Stephen Bitti (UKC chief executive), Deborah
Jack (NAT chief executive), Councillor Piara Singh Clair (the Lord Mayor of
Leicester) and Elisabeth Crafer (director of Positively Women).
Over 400 delegates from across the UK attended the largest ever national conference
of people living with HIV and Aids at Leicester University in early September.
It brought together people living with the virus from across Britain to develop
skills to influence health services, have a more powerful voice in their own
healthcare and more influence over their lives.
Changing Tomorrow: Am I Doing Something? saw delegates take part in over 40
separate seminars and workshops on a host of topics about living with and
coping well with HIV and Aids.
It was the first national conference of people living with HIV held in this
country for five years and took over the leafy campus of Leicester University
on a glorious weekend which saw hard work and campaigning balanced with a
riotous social programme. The Lord Mayor of Leicester, Councillor Piara Singh
Clair, welcomed delegates at the opening ceremony and 50 balloons were released
to represent the 50,000 believed to be living with HIV and Aids in the UK.
“I am so delighted this event is actually happening in the city where
I have the honour to be mayor this year,” Councillor Singh Clair said,
adding that he was happy to see “such a diverse mixture of people”
at the event.
Commenting on the success of the conference, UKC chairman Bernard Forbes,
said: “I am not alone in being totally blown away by the enthusiasm,
energy and renewed level of activism from the participants at the conference.”
Positive Futures director Andrew Little said: “The conference had a
phenomenal vibrant energy and will really help the diverse community of people
living with HIV in Britain to come together to fight for our rights and our
futures.”
Positive outcomes included the creation of networks for HIV positive people
such as the Scottish delegates who have established an email list to keep
in touch with each other and to move their ideas forward. Members of
the black and African community also came together to call for a unified voice
and action on their particular needs and demands. A faith focused group of
people living with HIV was also established. Conference organiser Babs Evans
got a standing ovation at the close of the conference.
Bernard Forbes said: “We’re not waiting three years for the next
conference. We have celebrated an incredible diversity here and we’ve
shared with each other the problems, challenges and successes of our community.
“The event has been hugely successful and the repercussions will be
felt for quite some time,” Forbes added.
A full conference report will appear next month on the UKC’s website
at www.ukcoalition.org
The government will concentrate less on unobtainable targets within the NHS,
a senior Department of Health (DH) official told the Leicester conference.
At a meeting about involving the public more within the NHS, Jane Mezzone,
sexual health programme manager at the DH, said: “Each patient now has
a responsibility to get involved in local decision making. “Sexual health
is not like diabetes or cancer where people are rushing to get involved,”
Mezzone added. Paul Ward, deputy chief executive of the Terrence Higgins Trust,
said the NHS plan in 2000 stressed patients were the most important people
in the health service,“but it doesn’t always appear that way.
There’s a lot of rhetoric.”
Neil Gerrard MP, chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Aids, told
the conference there was a disparity between HIV services around the country.
And there was clear anecdotal evidence that some people coming into the UK
were being refused HIV treatments. “Funding doesn’t necessarily
go quickly to where funding is needed,” Gerrard said. The NHS spends
less than £300 million a year on HIV but billions on smoking, diabetes
and heart disease.
“There’s very little hard evidence of supposed health tourism,”
the MP said, and the dispersal of asylum seekers and refusal of HIV treatments
is making the public health risk worse, not better.
“It’s a fact of life that migration is going to continue but it’s
bad to leave people untreated on public health grounds.” Gerrard backed
moves for each patient to get more involved and called on individuals to “pester”
their local MP. “On HIV most of them are pretty ill-informed but don’t
assume they are hostile or opposed to better HIV and GUM services.”
“We’ll never meet the 48 hour target for GUM services without
more funding. We’ve won the argument on compulsory HIV testing but should
maximise consensual testing.” Dr Simon Barton, clinical director at
London’s Kobler Clinic, the largest HIV unit in Europe, suggested some
Africans in this country may be putting off testing so that they won’t
be stigmatised.
“But the ring fence around HIV funding has gone and won’t be coming
back.”
‘Xenophobia and ignorance driving HIV
prosecutions’
Xenophobic press reports coupled with incredible ignorance of the law is driving
the increasing number of prosecutions for HIV transmission in this country,
according to a top law lecturer.
Daniel Monk, of London’s Birkbeck College, told the Leicester conference
that so far there had been four criminal trials for HIV transmission in the
UK.
In 2001 Stephen Kelly was sentenced to five years in Scotland; in 2003 Mohammed
Dica was given eight years in south London but is awaiting a retrial; in 2004
Konassi Adaye was sentenced to 10 years in Liverpool. And this spring Feston
Konzani was sent to prison for 10 years in Middlesbrough (see cover feature).
But there is no specific law about transmitting HIV in Britain and the law
“is an incredible mess,” Monk said.
Prosecutions are being made under the 1861 Offences against the Persons Act
and the question arises as to whether transmission of HIV can be grievous
bodily harm (GBH).
“There is no such thing as biological GBH. It is just an invention of
the media,” said Monk. The judge in the Dica case ruled that consent
was defence to the charges and in all the cases disclosure of HIV status before
sex was crucial to the prosecution case. “The Court of Appeal has ruled
that GBH can cover sexual offences but they are going against Home Office
directives.”
“But it’s all about what the jury think about the defendant and
the case before the court.” Evidence in such cases is enormously complicated
but disclosure of HIV status before sex establishes consent in the eyes of
the law as does having sex in public spaces or saunas. Yusef Azad, director
of policy and campaigns at the National Aids Trust, said the law around this
issue is very complicated and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is now using
a very old law in a very new way.
The important issues were why the government is so quiet on this question
and whether consensual sex has taken place.
“The criminal law is a very crude thing to deal with HIV,” Azad
said, and questioned whether criminalising HIV would reduce rates of transmission
of the disease.
“Evidence from the USA suggests that it doesn’t and it may well
deter people from having HIV tests.” Lisa Power, policy director at
THT, said all the cases so far had been against African migrant men in this
country.
“We must stop prosecutions on the basis of panic and prejudice,”
Power said, “and cases are being brought by the CPS not on facts but
on public attitudes,” she said.
“The criminal law is being used against minorities and HIV doctors are
already appearing as prosecution witnesses in the UK.”
A straw poll of delegates was taken on how the law should be used in future.
Many thought that people who lied about their HIV status should be prosecuted.
But an equal number thought that the law should not be used at all in such
cases and should be kept out of the bedroom altogether.
