Telling times
This month PN highlights the struggle many people with HIV face in deciding
when or whether to tell others about their HIV status. This dilemma is never
more acute than when meeting potential new sexual partners.
HIV negative and untested people are often quick to assume the choice is cut
and dried: HIV positive people should always tell, they say with indignation.
But as our cover feature reveals; it is never that simple.
This ‘telling dilemma’ is complicated by fear: fear of what the
other person will do with their personal information; fear of a violent reaction;
of rejection; of stigma; malicious gossip and – more recently –
fear of criminal prosecution.
One reader told PN: “Disclosure is risky these days; if you were to
tell someone, it may well be used against you.”
Rather than encouraging people with HIV to tell new sexual partners, it seems
recent prosecutions of people for recklessly infecting others are having the
opposite effect.
But that does not bother the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) which started
2007 with its tenth conviction for reckless transmission of HIV in England
and Wales.
The man who infected his girlfriend was jailed for three-and-a-half years.
Compare this penalty with the six month suspended sentence handed down a week
later to a man who downloaded child pornography from a paedophile website.
Our jails are bursting at the seams with no space for child sex offenders
yet they can still seem to find a cell for someone who has passed on HIV.
The CPS is now poised to extend prosecutions to people who recklessly pass
on other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) like Chlamydia, herpes and
syphilis.
With more than 100,000 cases of Chlamydia diagnosed each year, you have to
wonder how the criminal justice system will cope with the potential workload
this will generate. Surely there are better ways to improve the sexual health
of people in this country?
Get TB-wise
Tuberculosis kills more people with HIV worldwide than any other opportunistic
infection. But TB is not just a disease of poor countries.
Cases in the UK have risen sharply too with 8,000 reported in 2005.
Meanwhile the World Health Organisation tells us that multi-drug resistant
TB is present is almost every nation on earth.
Even with effective drug therapies, co-infection can cause serious complications
for people living with HIV and long periods of hospitalisation.
As world TB day approaches on March 24, activists are urging all HIV charities
in the developed world to take TB more seriously. They are also telling UK
health chiefs to fully fund TB services to ensure early detection and treatment
for all those who need it.
PN readers can find out more about TB by visiting www.tbsurvivalproject.org
Amanda Elliot, managing editor
