Tell us things we didn’t know already...
A long awaited report from the Aids Funders’ Forum (news item,
p12) exposes a depressing raft of unmet needs, crumbling services and a lack
of planning, knowledge, expertise, strategic vision... in fact, you name it
and it’s missing from HIV support services commissioned by the NHS and
local councils across the UK.
Services in many places are out of date, not available when people need them
and councils are cited as procuring services to a politically correct agenda
that usually ignores the make up of their local community of people with HIV.
Losers in this “PC” lottery are invariably gay men, whose needs
are generally assumed to be well met, despite any research to prove this,
and in many areas little or no investment is targeted at services for them.
One of many examples says thousands are invested in a “children’s
service focused on teenage work” in a borough with one teenager but
a much larger population of gay men with HIV.
If UKC or PN said this, the response would be “well you would say that,
wouldn’t you”. So thanks to the country’s leading charitable
funders of HIV programmes for pointing out big time what we already knew.
Here’s what we do say.
It’s not that a teenager with HIV doesn’t deserve the best quality
of medical and social support services: we all do. Young or old, gay or straight,
migrant or born here. And while it may be proportionally more expensive to
provide services for people with HIV ‘on the margins’ of the epidemic,
there is no excuse for sidelining anyone else as a result. Being gay offers
neither protection from getting HIV, or any more opportunities to deal with
the consequences than anyone else.
Australia a “no go” zone?
Aussie Prime Minister John Howard is reported as “mistaken” in
his recent pronouncements on whether or not people with HIV should be allowed
into the country. In a radio interview, asked if migrants with HIV should
be allowed to enter and live in Australia, he said: “My initial reaction
is no.”
The mistaken assertion relates to his lumping HIV in with tuberculosis which
is already a reason for people to be refused entry, but his comments are at
odds with official government policy. Howard could find himself investigated
for comments against people with HIV that amounted to “vilification”.
Right wing former politician Pauline Hanson (who’s looking to get back
into parliament in this autumn’s elections) views African migrants with
HIV as “of no benefit to this country whatsoever, they’ll never
be able to work”.
Sounds like Antipodean HIV educators have their work cut out. While immigration
laws in Australia are not subject to discrimination laws, the PM’s comments
are.
Meanwhile, Tourism Australia spends millions in the UK encouraging holidaymakers
and others to consider working holidays there. Their website (www.work.australia.com)
was an award winner in the UK Marketing Communication Consultants Association
Best 2006 ceremony in London in March.
Bernard Forbes, chair, UKC
